Short Term Trading Weekend Lounge: 12-14 Jan, page-91

From September to December last year I worked my way through all the ASX codes trying to become independent - blaze my own trail so to speak. Was a great experience, but my tipping percentage dropped from 62% to 15%.

Nothing wrong with the fundamentals of those companies I tipped, in fact some of them are now finally starting to run a bit. Chart wise they weren't too bad, but most of my tips ended up going sideways instead of up.

That whole quarter did my head in. I think in the 5 grander I went from 10k back to 9k during the December quarter. Combine this with the curse where for two years I hadn't been able to grow my portfolio beyond the one bag limit. The market was hot and I was going backwards. Did my head in trying to figure out what was going wrong, and get out of that rut.

What was I doing right before, and what was I doing wrong now? How do I turn it around? A lot of frustrating soul searching went on.

It finally dawned on me that over the last two years when I tipped well or made money I was really, really, really connected with the particular stock. The fundamentals were virtually imprinted on my brain. I could read the forum, and connect with what people were saying. There was no confusion in looking at the chart - it was clean, simple and obvious. The whole thing virtually just leapt up at me off the computer screen, smacked me in the face and screamed at me you've got to be in this. Then I would look at the buy and sell queues day after day, checking the charts, until finally one day the stock would jump off the screen and scream at me "Buy Now, It's About To Run" ..... and usually it did. It was like the stock was part of you - an extension of you - and you could FEEL IT!

The tips etc that hadn't gone well, I kind of understood the fundamentals, the charts were OK, and it all looked pretty good, but there was no connection with the stock - I couldn't feel anything.

From that moment I thought maybe I should be investing in stocks that I can feel. So the 4,400 ASX codes that I had previously reduced to Watchlists of 400, I then reduced to 12 that I really connected with then, which then came down to 3 that I could feel - AGY, AVZ and FZO. Not long after doing this, the curse was lifted.

Not sure how connected other posters get to their stocks, but if your research isn't quite giving you the results you want to become independent, maybe connecting with them a bit more until you can "feel them" might help you a little bit.

Cheers mate.