ETF Investing Strategies: Buy and Hold vs. Moving Average Week Ending 1-29-10

Third week in a row that the S&P 500 has moved down. Over this time, the S&P has lost about 73 points. According to the Yahoo Finance chart, it was November 6 of last year that the S&P 500 was at this level.

In stating the obvious, both of our investors lost money again this week. The buy and hold ETF investor lost about $258 in the balanced ETF portfolio. His total portfolio balance is down to $14,447. The total gain is now 43.8% since we starting tracking this portfolio in March of 2009 (48 weeks ago).

The moving average ETF investor lost about $176 for the week. His portfolio is now valued at $10,567 and is invested in the same balanced portfolio. He has gained 5.2% for the same 48 weeks. Just a few short weeks ago his gain had been over 11%.

The most recent 12 weeks are shown above.