I've been doing this for seven years, and all I got was...

Oh, here's a fun fact:

Based on our rough calculations (and assuming our dividend calculations are correct) since our first purchase in 2010, we've made a net profit of $2.57. We don't even have a lousy t-shirt to show for it.

Our recent buy brought us up in tech and a little more in financials. We are currently low in industrials and energy. See:

We're taking a look at our portfolio and deciding our next move. EWZ has been a drain on our portfolio, and we should have dumped it a while ago. We have our shared account under the name of one of our members. If we do sell EWZ, that means there will be some sort of tax implication to him. Since we've never unloaded any shares, there hasn't been anything paperwork-wise that we've had to account for. Obviously, there is a tax benefit to a loss. But, at least as we understand it now, unless he is itemizing there won't be any effect. Of course, eventually we will hopefully sell shares for a profit, which will have it's own effects. This is one of the funny quirks of being part of a small financial club, but the impacts are germane to any person investing. And it is always important to make sure that you get your forms right with IRS.

The issues with the taxes here is a matter of capital gains and capital losses. It only makes sense to sell EWZ if we can get something that will offset it. Right now, we're certain that it can't go much lower. There's no harm in letting it sit there. We could think of EWZ not as $100, but as -$400. Essentially, we're sitting on a capital loss, and we've sort of banked it. When we decide to sell something for a profit, we could get rid of that at the same time to mitigate the negative tax implications of making an actual profit (a capital gain).

Profit