Before I put away my TREA spreadsheet, I thought I would share some monthly performance data with the board.

For the first twelve complete years of its operations (from 1996 through 2007), TREA generated an average rate of return of 9.7%.  Listed below is a summary of some pertinent monthly data from the spreadsheet (first column of data is average rate of return, second column is highest monthly return, and third column is lowest monthly return):

• 0.60%   Jan   1.34%   0.06%
• 0.53%   Feb   1.06%   0.09%
• 0.83%   Mar   1.63%   0.31%
• 0.68%   Apr   1.48%   -0.05%
• 0.92%   May   1.66%   0.27%
• 1.04%   Jun   2.33%   0.43%
• 0.86%   Jul   1.45%   -0.14%
• 0.96%   Aug   2.05%   0.36%
• 1.00%   Sep   1.86%   0.21%
• 0.64%   Oct   1.33%   -0.18%
• 0.74%   Nov   1.21%   0.30%
• 0.93%   Dec   1.67%   -0.12%

Some observations from this data:

1.  For the four quarters, the highest average returns were achieved in the last month of each quarter.

2.  During the last three quarters of the years, the lowest average returns were achieved in the first month of each quarter.

3.  The third quarter of the years produced the highest average rates of return, followed by the second quarter, the fourth quarter, and the first quarter.

4.  Average returns for the highest month (June) were almost twice that of the lowest month (February).

Disclaimer:  I am not a current shareholder in TREA.  Note that I am not predicting anything from this data, nor should anyone assume these data patterns will continue into the future.

Jared