Welcome to all the readers who’ve come from Advanced Personal Finance Carnival of Personal Finace #116, but without further adieu we move on the topic of the day: The performance of my IRA.

Another month and another update on my IRA. My IRA accounts saw some recovery in August, not enough to get me back to where I was at the end of July. However, I’ll take what I can get. My cash/money market holdings are still around 20% reflecting my current ambivalence with the state of the market. Given what I think are some very real risks to the economy, the market is not cheap enough to buy in general and I haven’t had enough time in the last few months to research particular companies that I want to buy into. I expect my cash to sit as cash until at least early November.

Above I’ve also highlighted a few interesting non-transactions. Sun Microsoft systems changed their symbol from SUNW to JAVA in order to better reflect the direction of business (according to them). In addition the calls I had sold on PALM expired, and I’ve reflected that by highlighting it in light yellow.