The Cash-King Portfolio

 
 Simpleton           n/a        n/a     +519.7% 
 S&P 500             556        1175    +111.3%

Now, regardless of any competition between The King and The Fool ("As long as the Fool Port keeps amusing us, we promise not to lop their heads off") in terms of portfolio performance, there's one element about our portfolio that I really do love: Our decision to add $2,000 of new savings every six months. We started with a lump sum of $20,000 in February of this year, and now we've committed to adding $2,000 of new savings to the portfolio every six months. Twenty years from now when we're all tapping into The Fool from space stations around the galaxy, we'll have invested a total of $100,000 into this portfolio.

We hope this sets an example for you and your families and friends, no matter how much or how little money you have. The idea of investing once and then never saving again just doesn't fly with us, yet it's the working model used to scare folks about bear markets. They say: "If you'd bought an index fund at the peak in 1966, you wouldn't have started making money until 1982." Well, it's our hope that no Fool would ever blunder so badly. Methodically adding new savings allows you to participate in the market's gradual ascent (and intermittent descents) at many points along the way. We think it's a very important discipline -- both in personal finance terms and when investing.

But let's look more closely at how we'll manage the Cash-King Portfolio going forward. Yesterday I outlined how we would be accounting for these additional deposits using the share-valuation method. Today, I start with a personal plan for the actual investment process.

As most of you know, the Cash-King Portfolio is made up of two pieces:

1. Between 8 and 12 Cash-King stocks, designed to be held for at least 10 years. We may well add to the positions with new money, be we don't intend to sell them except under extraordinarily adverse circumstances (false accounting, executive fraud, a dramatic turn in the industry. We'll be publishing the 12th Step to C-K Investing, When to Sell a C-K, at some point this summer.)

2. A Foolish Four component, initially representing 25% of the portfolio, which we've put in to help smooth out the portfolio's overall performance.

Originally, we felt that the Foolish Four part of the Portfolio would take almost no time to manage. We would simply buy the four stocks selected by the RP variation, hold them for 18 months and a day, rotate, and start over.

However, we've now hit two turns in the road.

First, as time goes on, we do want to keep the Foolish Four to at least between 20% and 25% of the total portfolio. Currently, the Foolish Four represents 22.75% of the total value of the portfolio, down from 25% at the beginning of the year. If Gap, Pfizer, and Microsoft continue to soar, then the Foolish Four could easily make up less than 20% of the Cash-King portfolio by New Year's Day.

That would hardly create anxiety in the C-K corner of Fool Global HQ, but we would be faced with a puzzle. Were that to happen, would we want to make our February investment of $2,000 into the Fool Four? Should we do that in anticipation now in our August investment? These questions keep us from getting in the last four minutes of a three-hour Sunday nap. You see, they're HAUNTING us.

Here's my opinion.

Whenever the Foolish Four share falls to less than 20% of our entire portfolio, we should commit the next $2,000 toward this high-yield approach. Even as it's in vogue to criticize the Dow model today, remember that it's primarily a defensive approach. It proved a magical hedge against that flat market (1966-1982) mentioned in the bear's scenario above.

So that's that. End of C-K report for the day.

But, no! I said we'd hit TWO turns in the road. What's the second? Well, in the last few months, hundreds of contributors to our Dow Dividend message folders have researched and published a lot about this model and about seasonality. The work is still ongoing, but a general consensus is has formed championing the idea that Foolish Four investments be made in either December or January and then held for two years, to take advantage of long-term capital-gains tax rates. [Ed. Note: Legislation that has been passed by Congress and is now waiting for President Clinton's signature will change the holding term for favorable long-term capital gains treatment from 18 months to 12 months.]

But that's tough for us. Our next $2,000 cash infusion will come on August 3rd. The following one will be on February 3, 1999. So, what should we do if the Foolish Four dips below 20% between now and February 1999? The way I see it, there are two possibilities, each with merit:

1. Don't make any new purchase in August, leaving the $2,000 for a Fool Four investment in December of this year.

or

2. Don't sweat the Fool Four seasonality too much, and just put the February $2,000 into that group if it's fallen to less than 20% of our overall portfolio. Don't get me started on how to rotate our Fool 4 portfolio from there, though.

I would welcome the input of my fellow Fools -- that's Rob, Phil, Tom, and YOU -- in the Cash-King Strategy Folder (Web). How should we manage the Fool Four component of our portfolio?

Tomorrow, I'll spend some time talking about how we might pick Cash-Kings that aren't in our portfolio today and also about when I think it's proper to buy more shares of the Cash-Kings we already own. Until then....

Fool on!

Al

Cash-King Strategy Folder
Cash-King Companies Folder

Today's Features -- It's what's going on at the Fool today.

07/16/98 Close

Stock  Change    Bid 
 ---------------- 
 AXP   +  11/16 115.25 
 CHV   +  3/16  83.13 
 CSCO  +  1/4   95.75 
 KO    -  5/8   87.19 
 GPS   +  3/4   65.75 
 EK    +4 1/2   87.00 
 XON   -  3/16  71.44 
 GM    +  5/16  70.13 
 INTC  -  1/8   84.19 
 MSFT  -  1/8   117.25 
 PFE   +2       118.00 
 TROW  -  11/16 41.56 
 

                  Day   Month    Year  History 
         C-K      +0.51%   6.78%  21.78%  21.78% 
         S&P:     +0.78%   4.42%  18.25%  18.25% 
         NASDAQ:  +0.30%   5.58%  21.03%  21.03% 
  
 Cash-King Stocks 
  
     Rec'd    #  Security     In At       Now    Change 
     2/3/98   24 Microsoft     78.27    117.25    49.80% 
     2/3/98   22 Pfizer        82.30    118.00    43.38% 
     5/1/98   37 Gap Inc.      51.09     65.75    28.69% 
    2/27/98   27 Coca-Cola     69.11     87.19    26.16% 
     2/6/98   56 T. Rowe Pr    33.67     41.56    23.43% 
    6/23/98   23 Cisco Syst    86.35     95.75    10.89% 
    5/26/98   18 American E   104.07    115.25    10.75% 
    2/13/98   22 Intel         84.67     84.19    -0.57% 
  
 Foolish Four Stocks 
  
     Rec'd    #  Security     In At     Value    Change 
    3/12/98   20 Eastman Ko    63.15     87.00    37.77% 
    3/12/98   20 Exxon         64.34     71.44    11.04% 
    3/12/98   15 Chevron       83.34     83.13    -0.26% 
    3/12/98   17 General Mo    72.41     70.13    -3.15% 
  
 Cash-King Stocks 
  
     Rec'd    #  Security     In At     Value    Change 
    5/26/98   18 American E  1873.20   2074.50   $201.30 
     2/3/98   24 Microsoft   1878.45   2814.00   $935.55 
     2/3/98   22 Pfizer      1810.58   2596.00   $785.42 
     5/1/98   37 Gap Inc.    1890.33   2432.75   $542.42 
    2/27/98   27 Coca-Cola   1865.89   2354.06   $488.17 
     2/6/98   56 T. Rowe Pr  1885.70   2327.50   $441.80 
    6/23/98   23 Cisco Syst  1985.95   2202.25   $216.30 
    2/13/98   22 Intel       1862.83   1852.13   -$10.70 
  
 Foolish Four Stocks 
  
     Rec'd    #  Security     In At     Value    Change 
    3/12/98   15 Chevron     1250.14   1246.88    -$3.27 
    3/12/98   20 Eastman Ko  1262.95   1740.00   $477.05 
    3/12/98   20 Exxon       1286.70   1428.75   $142.05 
    3/12/98   17 General Mo  1230.89   1192.13   -$38.77 
  
                               CASH     $94.76 
                              TOTAL  $24355.70 
   
 *The year for the S&P and Nasdaq will be as of 02/03/98 
       
 
 

</THE CASH-KING PORTFOLIO>

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