What is your investing strategy, and what is your performance

I keep & maintain a diversified portfolio of what I think r the best stocks in their respective sector. I look for companies that r coming out with new products, r innovative, & the leaders in their area.

In my IRA, I own Apple, Starbucks, Google, Whole Foods, & Genentech.

Here is my reasoning for owning these 5 companies - this will give u an idea of my investment strategy & why I buy the companies I did.

I bought an Apple IPOD back in early 2004 & was just amazed by it. Their computers were robust & stable, compared to Windows based machines. Every few months I'd hear about a new computer or product coming out from Apple. I ended up buying a ton of Apple stock a few months later.

Who does not drink Starbucks? They open ~1000 new stores every year & continue to expand overseas. At work, in morning meetings, half the staff r holding a Starbucks cup. Starbucks continues to come up with new drinks & coffees. When I was in Asia there was a Starbucks everywhere I went.

Google. Everyone uses Google now. Every day Google announces a new product or feature to their site. The Google toolbar is smart. Every search/click u do means $$$ in Google is pocket.

Whole Foods. This is one of my favorite stocks. You hear on the news the benefits of organic foods. The produce at Whole Foods is 50x better than what I see at Albertsons or Safeway. Everytime I go there it is super crowded.

Genentech - Their drug pipeline is huge. Their cancer fighting drugs sales r skyrocketing. They r also finding that some of their drugs can be used to treat other diseases.

I have a little more Tech than I want but I really like Apple & Google.

Performance wise I am up about 98% in 2 yrs.

Outside of my IRA I own Ebay, GE, WMT, XOM, GGP, PNRA, & QCOM

I bought my first stocks 5 years ago. at first I did not really know what I was doing. I just bought what I thought was good. but then I started reading about value investing & learning how to actually value a company to assess wether or not I was getting a good price for the stock.

I use a valuation method that uses EPS, although most people recommend using free cash flow as a more accurate measure of a company is financial strength. Basically I try to estimate what a stock will be worth in the future, & what price I would need to buy it at now to ensure a certain rate of return.

I try to keep my estimates very conservative, to have a large margin of error. so far, in 5 years, I have a total return of 43%, compared to 12.5% for the S&P 500. That comes out to 10.25% annualized, vs. 2.5% for the S&P.