White Trash in hard times

Time to check in again on the White Trash Portfolio.

To refresh your memory, the components of the White Trash Portfolio were as follows:

• BFB - Brown-Forman Corp. Cl B
  
• BUD - Anheuser-Busch Cos. Inc.
  
• CHB - Champion Enterprises Inc.
• F - Ford Motor Co.
• GM - General Motors Corp.
  
• IGT - International Game Technology
  
• KO - Coca-Cola Co.
  
• MCD - McDonald's Corp.
• MO - Altria Group Inc.
• WMT - Wal-Mart Stores Inc

Since inception in March 2007, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) tracking the major indexes performed as follows:

• DIA, which tracks the Dow Jones Industrial Average, is down 28.7%.
• SPY, which tracks the S&P 500, is down 36.9%.
• VTI, which tracks the performance of the broad US stock market as a whole, is down 38.2%.
• IYC, which tracks the Dow Jones Consumer Cyclical index, is down 41.7%.

And White Trash? Down 29.9%.



In less than two years, there have been a lot of changes to the WTP.

Kraft Foods, which we didn't originally hold, was spun off from Altria Group (aka Philip Morris.)

Anheuser-Busch sold themselves to InBev.

Ford and GM look like they will need an emergency infusion of billions and billions of dollars just to make it through the next few months.

The three stocks that are consistently doing well through the downturn and keeping things from being worse than they might be: Anheuser-Busch, McDonalds, and Wal-Mart.