1. Trading Related: Continue learning and progressing with both Technical Analysis and Fundamentals, keep doing more of what I've done this year.
2. Get back into some fitness regimes & more active; Trading, Investments, Property, Architecture all desk jobs so getting back to being more active is on the agenda.
3. Motivation keeps people back, a lot of times people will say they want to achieve something but it's more an ideology than a reality of what they really want, if you want something bad enough you'll do everything you can to achieve it, just have to have the motivation that keeps you going, with a motivation comes strong will power, if it's not happening then you don't want it enough.
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.
Trading related resolution, .. don't loose money, but don't let that paralyse me into not making decisions. Perhaps assisted with a measure of my portfolio risk/volatility.
Short term trading might have short in the name - but is a long-term process to learn and refine for me. Initial ambitions of making bags quick and an early retirement have not yet come to fruition 392 trades, $3490 of brokerage costs and 18 months later .. still learning every day.
A 2016 objective was 'don't loose money'. Looking at my ST trading account, its certainly had low draw-downs and volatility. As a result though, total % returns suffered.
A further update into my taking my ST Trading a bit more seriously and methodically - realised after that post, that I wasn't really tracking things very holistically. Whilst tracking individual ticker and trades OK, I didn't have a full perspective of the account balance, cash position, return, trade frequency etc. To fit my approach, I started logging and plotting monthly stats:
Am interested to know what methods others use to track the performance of their portfolio or trades.
Do people look at each entry/parcel, individual tickers, holding time etc? Also, things like % invested etc?
After a great start, had started to build up a nice balance .. then for whatever reason, didn't seem to be reinvesting and leveraging that new money.
Part of this was due to being overseas and not able to track things as well, moreso though I think being so nervous about giving back the previous profits meaning I wasn't taking positions and risks like previously.
The top three winning tickers returned $10k profit, worst three tickers lost just under $6k. Duds being NWZ and HMX, these both needed to be cauterised much sooner rather than watching $$$ sink away. .. still holding HMX now, as its virtually a shell, with cobalt, so could be interesting in 2017. Otherwise though, am pretty confident that I wont let any positions slip this far into the red again.
Overall though, need to do more of what works and less of what doesn't. Sounds so easy, if only it was
Mistakes I keep making
Holding onto loosers. Gets easier, but not yet automatic.
On the bright side, only one looser was a 'new' dud addition. NWZ was a historic holding. Not an excuse, but am please to be only able to count a single mistaken entry that wasn't cut loose in the past 6 months.
Hesitating. Just seeing a good idea or trade isn't enough to profit from it.
Improvements
Pilot buys (thanks @Freehold) - Have definitely been scaling into, and out of positions with more success.
Buying $1k worth of something first, then several more parcel if need be, has proven good at saving new losses, than just dumping $5k into something and watching it sink.
Patience. Current portfolio has much larger positions, in a few conviction plays. Mostly shelly but also a few others. Sometimes keep things interesting by trading in and out of the same stock .. whilst waiting for it to properly pop.
Liquid holdings. For a short term point of view, being able to exit is useful so have steered away from crazy illiquid stocks, even if they look tempting. Whilst taking larger positions overall, most of what I hold could be offloaded quickly if needed without a great loss.
Personally, I need to make mistakes myself before properly learning. None of the things I have posted or learnt are new or unique, and have read them all previously. From respected posters, traders on HC and elsewhere.
Stubbornly I seem to be incapable of just taking someones advice .. and challenge it, loose some money before realising that there is a reason people warn against the stupid things I was trying - and were kind enough to post/warn about over and over.
So goals for 2017
Don't loose money, but don't let that stop me making some good trading returns.
Better record and understand risk and return volatility.
Keep more records. Would like to understand whether focusing on more stocks, or being broad works well. At the moment am 75% invested across 10 tickers.
Enjoy life away from the screen.
Also going to have a re-read of the STT Knowledge library v2.0 .; Thanks to everyone who contributes to the thread.
392 trades, $3490 of brokerage costs and 18 months later .. still learning every day.
