Recap of day 8

Good evening readers, my apologies for such a late post, but I've had friends here from out of town and was attending a professional sporting event. Unfortunately, I'm simply too tired to write a detailed report on the performance of our two different investments, although you can expect a detailed post tomorrow night on the market forces driving up the price of gold and silver, and propping up the S&P 500.

Today we turned a profit on our Vanguard 500 Index investment, we're now in the black. Precious metals still need to catch up to where they were the day we bought them, keeping in mind that I started this experiment when gold and silver were both trading right near record high levels.

If you haven't had a chance yet, check out my post from last week, Are precious metals headed for a major crash? -- I think it's an excellent introduction to a subject that a lot of investors are uncertain.

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Day 8

Results upon NY close of trading -- March 21, 2011:

• Gold closed at $1,427.10 per oz, up $7.40 and 0.52% from last week. Silver closed at $36.10 per oz, up $0.82 and 2.32% from last week.
• VFINX closed at $120.04 per share, up $1.77 and 1.5% from last week.

Investment #1, Precious Metals:

• Percent return for the day: 1.42%
• Profit for the day: $1,332.10
• Total percent return: -4.6%
• Total profit: $-4,602.95

Total investment value: $93,986.73

Investment #2, Vanguard 500 Index:

• Percent return for the day: 1.5%
• Profit for the day: $1,476.18
• Total percent return: 0.2%
• Total profit: $158.46

Total investment value: $100,113.17

Advantage: Vanguard 500 Index, by $4,794.53