Month In Review -- August 2007

To put it bluntly, my trading in August sucked. Fortunately, the market as a whole sucked as well so I don't feel too awful about my performance. Judging from a perusal of other blogs, sites, and newsletters, August was tough for everyone.

For the most part, I stuck to my trading plan in August. I didn't lose more than 1% of my portfolio on any one trade. Unfortunately, I had several losing trades in a row so I ended up down around 10% for the month.

Like I've mentioned before, I've dramatically changed the amount of risk on each trade. Last year I often was fully invested in one or two stocks with wide stops. A struggling market made HUGE dents in my portfolio that were hard to recover from. I'm not seeing HUGE advances either, but I'll take a less volatile approach over insanity any time.

I've been taking a closer look at technical analysis since this downturn began. I've been a fundamental guy for years and frankly technical analysis never seemed to work for me. But during the past month I've seen some advantages to using TA when my stocks with strong fundamentals began sucking wind. It would have been prudent to look over some charts before I blindly jumped back in (and consequently got my clock cleaned).

I'm counting on a strong finish to the year and my goal is to recover my losses and be ahead by more than 43% by December 31st. I've got my work cut out for me, but with every passing month (and day) I learn something new.