2007--The Year in Review
Year in Review--Part One
Last January I listed six goals for my trading during 2007. Even though the last few months have thrown me for a loop, I still managed to accomplish most of my goals. Here they are:
Beat the S&P 500—The S&P 500 made around 4.24% this year. With a half day of trading left, I think I beat it—by 9 times.
Beat the Stock Superstars Portfolio—I’ve already mentioned that Stock Superstars made (6.1%) this year.
Beat Charles Kirk's Yearly Return—Charles hasn’t reported the return he earned this year, but by tracking the trades he made on his members only site, I think I’ve got him beat.
Make 20% on Portfolio—Doubled it at 40.38%.
Match or beat last year's return (62.44%)—Nope. I think I could have made this goal if I had managed my account better and if I had used some market monitors to let me know when to back off of trading. I was up 52.62% on October 31st and if I had gotten out there and waited until things turned around a bit, I think I could have beat this goal.
Control my emotional trading and stick with the program—Much better this year, but I still have a long way to go. I learned to manage my risk much better this year and that helped a lot with the emotions of trading. I still allowed too many outside influences to affect my trading.
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8 comments:
Scott,
Congrats on an excellent year. I enjoy reading your blog. You provide daily evidence that small, part-time traders can beat both the market and most of the returns of traders on the street.
I'm sure you crushed Kirk. I figure he earned around 10%, which is perplexing considering his obvious talents.
Thanks for the kind words. My goal is to let small-timers like myself know that it isn't impossible to beat the market like many claim. It's not only possible, it's a lot of fun!!
I think Charles Kirk has moved to a new level with the size of his portfolio. He's comfortable with the amount of money he has now and he really doesn't need to make any more. I think he trades more for entertainment then financial need now and that affects his level of risk.
As I follow your Zweig + RS 5 I see that the same five stocks have comprised the list for the past three weeks? Again this week it would be GHM 97
NOV 94
VSEC 92
APH 92
AMED 92
Hopefully you got the same results?
Thanks
That's true and the results this last month haven't been too spectacular--basically even for the month.
I always wondered what a reasonable return would be as the size of a portfolio grows. I have no idea how much money Kirk is managing but understand that risk aversion increases with the size of funds. I would love to hear your thoughts on this, particularly how you think weekly rebalancing techniques would work with larger portfolios. Thanks
I don't think the size of the portfolio matters as long as you stick to the risk management parameters you have set for yourself. I try not lose more than 1% of my portfolio on any one trade. That gives me a lot of leeway to make a lot of dumb trades (which I'm apt to do). That 1% value is in constant flux depending on the portfolio size at the time of the trade.
There's a blog called Stockcoach's Corner (no longer updated) that managed a $800K portfolio with 40 stocks in it. It's still out there if you google it. For the most part, The blog takes a value approach with micro-caps.
I LOVED that blog and based some of my blog on what I liked about it (posting weekly returns for example).
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