Getting Ready For Income Tax
I took the second step toward Tax Time today. (The first was to put all the 1099s, etc. in a folder.) I closed the 2003 books on my brokerage accounts and calculated the growth rate--rate of improvement--for each. This is the first year in three that all accounts are up. Yea, team!
Now, it's interesting to me the different spins I could put on the results. I could talk about the portfolio that was up 28 percent. I mignt forget to mention the one that was up only 6 percent.
However, if I were to have a moment of antispin, I might say that my portfolios were up from 6 to 28 percent. Of course, emphasizing the 28. (Don't forget, small portfolios produce large gains because of the way percentages are calculated---a little bit increased to a little bit more produces a large percentage gain.)
Another approach would be to state that on the average, my portfolios were up 14 percent. That sounds pretty good, doesn't it. Maybe I'll leave it that way.
To me, the most accurate way is to total all portfolio values for 2002 and 2003 and calculate the rate of change between 2002 and 2003, the percentage increase in value. I'll leave it there and let you fill in the blank.
9:46:37 PM 
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