volt, I think you make too much of my bumbling approach to making money. I'm still behind from last year, but not by much now. Unfortunately I ceased trading last year and was completely cash for a while while i did some other stuff, then decided to park a chunk of money into some B&B satellites and a small amount into B&B itself for the divvy. Ummm, yep, that would be just before the Lehman Bros disaster. Didn't watch the market regularly at all and then found I was down about 99% on the chunk I'd put in. Luckily I still had the other two thirds of my capital, so I watched and waited and put in the whole of the rest when I found myself thinking that the end of days was nigh. Figured that if i was that scared then the market was probably worse, so there was probably good value to be had - if it wasn't really end of days, that is. I was helped a little when my cleaning lady of all people offered me a chunk of her mothers B&B satellites at well below market prices, just to cash them out. She didn't have a broker. No rip off, I paid her exactly what she asked after informing her of the market price. At that stage B&B sats were down to about 2c, and I didn't think they were worth anything really so I did her a favour. Anyway, from my perspective there was no point in selling when they had already lost so much, but thought that if they survived then it was going to be a huge gain. so I bought some more and held. Bought some other high divvy blue chips as well, on their lows in the middle of the final panic selling. Thought B&B satellites might pay off in a few years if I was lucky, but it also appealed to the gambler in me. Rather than play them safely, I tripled or quadrupled my risk. The risk reward seemed astronomical even if a long shot, as long as they survived. The blue chips have followed the market plus some alpha. As opportunity arose I did a few small leveraged trades which were successful. So, now in a surprising few months I'm almost back to where I was before shifting out of complete cash last year. Before tax and other costs, I'm well ahead. Its sort of like my private Anzac event - I'm celebrating coming back from a huge loss rather than celebrating a victory. But all in all my trading balance is a pleasant surprise. I've started to realise that there's an important lesson or two in this for me. Its not about TA, and I haven't really sorted it out yet. Maybe its about just holding, maybe its something about the benefits of diversification, maybe its something about only gambling the funds that you're prepared to write off, but mostly its again educated intuition about market sentiment, opportunity and guts. And that really is my trading style, as you're aware, but now applied to a longer time frame. I'm still not trading much and probably won't again. cheers mate!
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