May 2009 Financial Asset Roundup

Here are my current financial assets as of the market close on May 11th, 2009:

Asset	Apr 2009	May 2009	Change
Checking	505	805	300
Money Market	14,763	21,730	6,967
Savings Bonds	15,257	20,321	5,064
Treasury Bills	0	0	0
CDs	128,694	117,702	-10,992
Brokerage	80,875	80,302	-573
401k	61,473	66,506	5,033
Roth IRA	25,843	27,950	2,107
SEP IRA	153,482	163,537	10,055
529 Savings	31,923	33,687	1,764
Total Assets	$512,815	$532,540	$19,725
			(3.85%)

The upward trend has continued since the last update with the S&P 500 index up 6.15% during that time:

(chart courtesy of msn.com)

Unemployment is still rising and is now up to 8.9% (a 25 year high). The stock market rally has continued over the past month, although it has stumbled a bit over the past couple of days. Hopefully crude oil reaching $60 per barrel again is another sign of the start of some economic recovery.

I still haven't felt like blogging much lately, so my updates have been far and few between. After doing this for almost three years, I do force myself to do this monthly update since it is a good way to make me take note of my holdings on a periodic basis. Moneywise, my one year Patelco CD @ 4.07% APY CD matured at the end of April and I ended up buying some electronic April 2009 I Bonds at TreasuryDirect.gov due to a lack of other attractive cash options.

I've been somewhat encouraged by the pickup in the stock market over the past couple of months. Keeping things in perspective though, I am still about $68k down from my peak in December 2007, and that ignores the $36k of SEP IRA contributions I've made since then. Hopefully things will continue to pick up....