With all the talk about the financial crisis, market melt-downs, Dow/S&P crashing, et. al., the one metric that really matters to each of us individually is the performance of our personal portfolio. So, how is your portfolio doing this year? Mine has performed above expectations.

I am not a stock trader; I am a dividend and value based long-term buy-and-hold investor. When I add a stock to my dividend portfolio, it is my intention to hold the stock forever. When stock prices start dropping, our primal instinct of flight kicks in and we want to sell. In many cases that is the time to be buying. However, sometimes selling a stock is the right thing to do.

Earlier this week we looked at my top 5 high fliers for 2008. Unfortunately, for every up, there is a down and that is certainly true for my portfolio. As before, we will look at results through July 31, 2008. Here they are my cellar dwellers with comments:

Like most financial company's, iStar Financial Inc. (SFI) has experienced a difficult time over the last several quarters. It has seen it share price collapse from a 52 week high of $40.55 to under $10.