There's one thing I'm certain of/Return.../I will.../to old.../BRAZIL!

Members present: Brian (& Bunny), Bickford, Yousef

So EWZ dropped quite a bit midweek (see Brian's previous post), and it brings up the fact that we should be aware of what we have. We have been going with ETFs, to add to the diversification, but those funds are composed of many bits. It would be helpful to be aware of what those bits are, so that we can do that important research. 

EWZ: Two major components of this fund, Petrobras and Valle, sucked this one down a bit. 

SPY: Over the last five quarters we have earned about $13 dividends. Also, the share price is up  to about $140--purchased at $119.

AT&T: We have gotten a dividend of about $7!

We spent some time poking around the Scottrade account to take a look at how our portfolio is doing. Regrettably, Scottrade only allows one person at a time to be logged in. While this makes sense for security reasons, it also fails to recognize that people may be doing this, as we are, on the Internets. 

The conclusion we came to is that if we were to cash out our entire portfolio, after fees we would make $4.76, collectively. Hey, this is a positive number. Free learning experience, right? Well, not free, we would make a $1.59 on the deal.* 

*Apparently, through some tax voodoo that we don't care to understand or explain, we might be out $0.80. Thanks a lot, Uncle Sam!

Oh fine, we knew you'd be chomping at the bit for this tax magic, so here it is:

The total gains are $46.76, less $42 for trading fees. This gives us $4.76. We divide these winnings by 3 to get $1.59 a piece. However, we have to look at taxes on the gains. Each gained $15.59, which for taxes gets rounded to $16. This is taxed at a rate of 15% (capital gains), giving a tax bill of $2.40. This means that we are in the hole about $0.81 a piece. 

For next week, 

*Maybe Yousef will do his taxes. 

*Figure out some topics for educational meetings.

Profit!