Week In Review 5-18-2007

A crummy week for me. Lots of mistakes and regrets. Down 3.38%. All of my screens but one did better than me. The best made .84% and the worst lost 5.72%. The small cap stocks fared the worst and I had plenty of those.

What I learned this week--

My disaster with KRSL taught me to quit trying to outsmart my screens. I was lucky to get rid of that thing with a loss of 10%. The only other stop loss that I benefited from was with AZZ. I got rid of it at $27.01 and it ended the week at $25.63. The other stocks I stopped out of went on to embarrass me SYNL, VSEA, CPA.

I let my emotions get the best of me this week. Instead of seeking comfort in the returns of my "system" I turned to the opinion of others and tried to prevent big losses by second guessing. I should have been slightly up or at least even this week. It was a good lesson for me and I hope that I will apply it to my trading in the weeks to come.

I must admit, though, that I am a bit squeamish about things right now. I went back to see where I was last year at this time and was a bit astonished to see that I was up only 8.24%. Last May was pretty rough (and so was June and July) and I would be bothered if I gave up much more of the gains I've made so far.