Move over Mr. Buffett, there is a new bull in town (don’t I wish)!

According to my Broker, my Roth IRA has average a 52.75% return since inception!  I’m an investing GOD, not.

Please note the following statistics provided by my online Charles Schwab account, and read the real deal below:

It really does make me look like an investing God, but unfortunately the Inception Date is not quite old enough.  Apparently the Inception Date is when my broker started keeping records because I had the account much earlier than the year 2009…

Back around 2003, I started my online Roth IRA with my broker, and I did very well.  In fact, I doubled my balance in less than 5 years.  Unfortunately, I was in some risky stock and I actually loss money and ended the 5 year with less than I put in originally (just by a little bit though).

Devastated, but still excited by the incredible stock market ride, I decided to alter my strategy to a two stage approach:

1.) Invest in a solid dividend stock that would not decrease in value (this was for my emergency fund aspect of the Roth IRA).

2.) Invest in something that I thought would do well in the market, but wasn’t a sure thing.  So I invested in a speculative stock (BAIDU).  I was actually pretty sure this was a good choice, but with speculative stocks one never knows.

Well, my dividend stock did fine, but BAIDU (ticker bidu) went nuts over the next few years.  It’s been my biggest win ever in fact!

So while my numbers look impressive above, practically all of my big gain was betting on the BAIDU racehorse of a stock to make me the big gains.  I’m no longer own BAIDU in my Roth IRA, but the was a fun ride while it lasted.

If I doubled my income in 7 years, that’s only around a 10.2% return, but I sure wish it was 52.75% since inception.  If that were the case, I’d be bragging like there was no tomorrow 🙂

Statistics are funny sometimes, I just wanted to show how interesting they can really be.  Oh, and so far this year I’m off to a great start!  10.12% in the first month, not too shabby!

Have fun this year, the market should be another wild ride!

Don