Herv's $10,000 Portfolio!

As stated in my blog from yesterday, today is the day that I will be setting up my fictitious $10,000 portfolio. I feel like this will be a good way to share my investment ideas, and to have others comment and track my progress.

To begin with, I am going to put 50% of the allocated fictitious $10,000 to work right now in stocks that I believe have little downside. Since I am of the opinion that the stock market is working its way toward a correction phase, this seems like the prudent thing to do, and I will put the other $5,000 to work at a later time. I am going to fill the portfolio with 10 equal slots of $1,000.

1) VZ, ATT, and GE - All of my Dow Dogs. See my post from yesterday. As of right now, the portfolio purchased 30 shares of VZ at 33.13, 37 shares ATT at 26.69, and 66 shares GE at 15.13.
2) C - I think this stock is priced for indefinite government ownership/screw-up. The federal government has announced that they will be dwindling their stake in Citi over the course of the year. Furthermore, I think the financial sector is poised to start posting some profits. The portfolio purchased 302 shares C at 3.31.
3) TBT - This is the double short 20 year US Treasury ETF. This is basically a play on rising interest rates. The government is not only going to have to raise rates to combat inflation, but I feel they are going to have to sell bonds to soak up some of the excess liquidity. The laws of supply and demand tell us that the more bonds they sell, the lower their prices, and conversely, the higher the yields need to be. The portfolio purchased 20 shares TBT at 49.88.

To track my portfolio, I will compare it against the overall market, that is, the Wilshire 5000 index which is currently trading at 11,497.41. At least once a week, and maybe every few days I will update this blog with the progress of the portfolio, and certainly every time a trade is made.