One Week In

It's been a week since Barack Obama became president, and since I started my career as a virtual portfolio manager.

I'm very impressed with Obama's performance so far, especially in the realm of governmental transparency. whitehouse.gov is a truly amazing site, as elegant as it is detailed. Fortunately, his actions are speaking even louder than his words with the closing of Guantanamo Bay and his first 2 memoranda, which effectively raised the efficiency of automobiles in a direct attempt to reduce America's dependance on imported energy. Obama is certainly 'walking-the-talk' so far, and I am excited to watch his government slowly implement their broad strategy.

My first week on the Virtual Stock Exchange was a bit bumpy. Having put 2/3rds of my money in the game as Obama was getting inaugorated, my protfolio was down as much as 3.5% last week. My stocks fell in tune with the broad market, as financial stocks got pummelled again. Fortunately, the markets have been better so far this week, and I'm only down 2.68% at this moment. The big lesson I learned was to not buy all at once. By allocating so much of my portfolio at the onset, I limited my option to buy more as prices continued to drop. I think it's a really smart idea to buy and sell in smaller portions over time, never all at once.

One thing that is important to recognize is that for both Obama and myself, there is no precendent for our current context, and we will both make mistakes as we try to figure it out. I'm certainly trying to learn and evolve as I go, and let's hope for the world's sake that Obama's government can do the same.