Week in Review 2-1-2008

I got spanked.

This week was a mess for me and it is reflected in my account. I didn't lose anything (I gained a measly .5 percent), but when the averages looked like this (Dow +4.39%, the S&P 500 +4.87%, Nasdaq +3.75%, and the Russell 2000 +6.08%) I can't be too happy about my performance.

Here's where I went wrong (please learn from my stupidity):

• I lost focus and strayed from my plan
• I resorted to stops (and had no guidelines for how to place them)
• I paid too much attention to indicators, news, and other blogs which paralyzed my trading
• I worried too much about the broad market
• I waited for stocks to "prove" themselves and then got left behind as they rocketed upward
• I sold too soon

It has never paid off for me to market time, and yet I do it every time my account takes a hit. You'd think after years of doing this, I would learn my lesson. It just hurts so much to loose money even when you know it's all part of the game.

Now that January is over, I hope to get back to the plan and crawl out of this hole I've dug for myself.

All but one of the stock screens did very well this week. The ZZ#1 screen which filters AAII's Zweig screen with Zacks #1 ratings made 11.42% this week with it's one pick LXU. That is the first stock the screen has picked since the end of December which may be an indicator of its own (no #1 stocks--market sucks).

The Zweig Relative Strength screen made 4.05% this week but is still underwater for the year. The screen would have done much better if it wasn't for the blowup of GHM at the beginning of the week. I picked GHM up on Wednesday and have made a nice 13% on it so far which was my only good call this week. Without GHM the screen would have made over 10% this week thanks to a tidy 29% return for WSCI.

StockPunk's To The Moon screen is sucking wind and is down over 11% for the year so far.