Psycho Killers (Musical Tribute)

MAB has pointed out to me that the Cycle Killers in my last post didn't perform all that well as a group.

Let's track Jim Cramer's cycle killers to the dollar and give him every possible benefit of the doubt. Let's say we bought $10,000 of each (to evenly diversify the risk), held all until yesterday (even though he told us to sell when they double, so we're really throwing him a bone here since we really should have sold CAT earlier), AND adjust for dividends and splits. That's $50,000 invested. Let's see how we did.

March 18, 2002 to April 30, 2008:

CAT: $25.95 to $81.88
AA: $34.17 to $34.78
IP: $37.46 to $26.17
DOW: $26.08 to $40.15
TYC: $108.43 to $46.79

Ending Balance:

CAT: $31,553
AA: $10,179
IP: $6,986
DOW: $15,395
TYC: $4,315

Grand Total: $68,428

$50,000 grew to $68,428 in 6 1/8th years.

(68428/50000)^(1/6.125) = 1.0526

That's 5.26% per year. Now let's see how we would have done with a 7-Year Treasury bought in March of 2002.

That's 5.14%.

Woohoo! The cycle killers performed almost exactly the same as a US Treasury Bond. Of course, in order to get that kind of cycle killing performance you had to ignore the advice to sell Caterpillar when it doubled. I wish to point that out again.

This musical tribute is probably the most fitting one I will ever have. Let's sum up why.

Group: Talking Heads
Album: Stop Making Sense
Song: Psycho Killer

That's a frickin' musical tribute miracle in my opinion. They come around maybe once in a million years or so, lol.