"An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field."

- Niels Henrik David Bohr

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Timeout

Today is a weird day. Reality check.

This stock market thing is just in a weird place right now.

After hours and hours of books, charts, backtesting, tweaking; and 7 months of terrible application and ending up with 25% losses on two accounts (~$11k), I have two months of net positive trades (2.3% and 4.1% respectively). Feeling good about myself, I decide that maybe I can actually do this, so I start a blog to chronicle my struggles.

Not even two weeks later I am up 13%. What gives? Is this for real? Is all my hard work finally paying off? Have I finally paid my dues? Am I just lucky? Am I getting too confident? Or are the market conditions just right for the approach I have settled on? When do I know this is for real? When can I entertain thoughts of quitting my day job? Should I not be giving my 'secrets' away? I have no idea.

But look at this chart:



(% Gain for all stocks meeting screener criteria)

That is the basis for my confidence. The chart represents the % gain for all of the stocks that passed the buy criteria since December 1, 2009. The heavy red line is the average. If I would have purchased them all, I would be sitting at a hypothetical positive 16% gain.

Of course there are some losers in the mix. I haven't happened to purchase any since I started this blog, and hopefully - maybe even skillfully - I can keep staying away. But I haven't hit any of the home runs either, and I have been selling them all too quickly. I think I need to be more careful with that, in a confident, non-stupid, kind of way.

Exciting stuff. Kinda scary stuff.

To be continued...

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