For this week's Discussion Activity, I would like you to evaluate and modify your portfolio. You will be re-evaluating your portfolio at this point. You may change your portfolio holdings if you wish at this point. You will need to use the spreadsheet for week 4 which is available in the Content seciton, then Select the stocks you would like to sell, select a day and use the closing prices for that day.

You can sell up to half your portfolio and replace it with any other publicly traded stock of your choice. You may also include up to 50% mutual funds, gold and silver funds, and other ETFs of your choice. Look up the price on the day you make the trade and include that information in your portfolio spreadsheet.

If you choose to sell and reinvest you can reinvest the proceeds only.

Proceeds: the amount of Cash you receive from the sale of stocks/investments on that day.

If you take a loss you will have less total dollars in your portfolio, and your spreadsheet needs to reflect the correct amounts.

Buy new shares based on the closing prices on the same day of the sale of your portfolio shares. You can also check dividend records if you'd like. If a stock you bought paid a dividend during your holding period, calculate the dividend you would have received, based on the number of shares you bought.

Part 1: Buying and Selling Answer the following questions: What stocks did you sell and why?

What was the gain/loss and proceeds from the sale? What did you buy to replace the shares you sold. How many shares did you buy, and what was the price? Did you decide to sell stocks with gains or losses? And why?

Did you use any mutual funds or EFTs in your portfolio? Why or why not? Remember you can only reinvest the amount of your PROCEEDS from the sale of the previous shares. This might mean that you have a realized loss from the sale and your total portfolio value may be less than your original money pool.

Part 2: Learn about Financial Benchmarks Go to Wikipedia or use a search engine to find information about the following financial benchmarks commonly used by investors:

Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) Standard and Poors 500 (S&P 500) NASDAQ 100 Look up the closing amounts of the Dow, S&P500 and NASDAQ100 on the first day class (Monday), and at the end of week 4 (the dates should match the other dates we are using for the discussions). What is the dollar value of the gain (increase) or loss (decrease) of each?

What is the percentage of gain or loss of each? How are the benchmarks performing compared with each other? Compare your portfolio to the 3 financial benchmarks. How is your portfolio doing in relation to the benchmarks? Is it better, worse or about the same?

Compare your portfolio percentage gains or losses to those of the three benchmarks. We will be using a new spreadsheet. Download the spreadsheet for this week and transfer your original data to it. It has places to record your sales, gains and losses, holds and liquidations.