Short Term Trading Weekend Lounge: 30Dec - 2 Jan, page-34

Well what a year 2016 was. Got the market bug back again, returned to HC, found STT, made a lot of online friends, had a few laughs, finished in the green for the year. Still about 25% away from recovering all of my losses from my first stint in the market but a lot more closer than I thought I would be at the start of the year.

The stand out lesson for me this year was to believe and back myself. Coming from a lot of turmoil in the real world with repeated redundancies and a relationship breakdown, I was at a pretty low ebb with no self confidence whatsoever. Market helped turn things around for me from a confidence point of view after some early results backed up my research. Interestingly, I researched but didn't/couldn't back a few runners as well which told me my stock picking methodology was ok. Then I started to back myself a bit more and overall was successful despite losses on individual stocks. Things still shaky jobs wise currently and increasingly difficult to stay positive but I am now trying to apply what I learnt from the market and apply that to the real world.

New years resolutions (Trading Related)
1. Start and maintain a written trade diary/journal. I file my "diary notes" currently in my cluttered head..
2. Keep to strategy but review it regularly. I've made no trades for the past three weeks since freeing up funds for an IPO. Missed the bounce in Goldies as a result. More a case of being asleep at the wheel but also that I'm down to 5 core conviction positions plus 5 traders which are either suspended (GMCO) , not yet listed (LSH), illiquid (MLMO, CXOOA) or not yet played out (MSR).
3. Ultimately I want to free up a 20-30% of portfolio cash hoard to take advantage of market events rather than being all in all the time.

New years resolution not trading related (ie stop smoking)
1. Figure out what course to plot in life (yeah just a small one...)
2. Lose weight (that little nugget gets recycled every year)
3. Be happy, no matter what.

Why to 9 out 10 people fail to follow through with said resolutions
1. Life getting in the way of life? If I could answer this question, I'd chalk that down as an achievement.

Hope 2017 is a great year for all STTers. Thanks as usual to @Freehold for creating a place that's my online home.