ETF Investing Strategies: Buy and Hold vs. Moving Average Week Ending 1-15-10

Not a great week in the U.S. financial markets. The S&P 500 closed down about 10 points for the week. This is not very surprising since the market had been moving up quite a bit lately. What goes up, must come down.

As a result, our two ETF investors lost money this past week. The buy and hold ETF investor lost about $108 in the balanced ETF portfolio. His total portfolio balance has backed off a bit to $15,246. This is a gain of 51.8% since we starting tracking this portfolio in March of 2009 (46 weeks ago).

The moving average ETF investor lost about $59 for the week. His portfolio is valued at $11,120 and is invested in the same balanced portfolio. He has gained 10.7% thus far for the same 46 weeks.


The most recent 12 weeks is shown above. Click on the chart for an easier to read view.