Google Inc (GOOG), Apple Inc. (AAPL): A Timeless Lesson in Portfolio Management

In June I celebrated Father’s Day by putting together a portfolio of 10 stocks that remind me of my dad. It was just a way to say thanks to him for getting me interested in investing at such a young age. I also vowed to keep track of this portfolio, as I’m confident that through the years it will be a market-beater, making Mr. Market green with envy. Granted, it’s only been a bit more than a month since its inception, but let’s see where things stand today as we start winding down earnings season.

The score
Out of all 10 stocks, only one is actually down on an absolute basis, and that’s Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) (-0.1%). Six of the 10 are beating the market. The four losing to the market are Dicks Sporting Goods Inc (NYSE:DKS) (-2.9%), Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) (-1.3%), Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) (-3.5%), and United Parcel Service, Inc. (NYSE:UPS) (-2.9%). And on a simple, non-time-adjusted basis, if you invested $1,000 in each of the 10 picks, you’d have $10,556.68 today versus the $10,338.42 you’d have if you’d plunked it all down in the S&P 500. Not a bad start.

You got your winnahs

And you got your losahs
They can’t all be winners all of the time, though, and while I’m a big proponent of owning a basket of Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG), and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), two of those three are losing to the market right now. Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG)‘s most recent quarter wasn’t a bad one by any stretch, but it did in fact miss estimates on both sales and earnings. One of the concerns investors have today is the downward trend in cost-per-click (the amount of money Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) makes when people click on its ads). Cost-per-click was down 6% over the same quarter last year as the move to mobile continues to grow. However, on the upside, the total number of paid clicks continues to trend upward with growth of 23% over the same time period.