The New Year

(c) 2012 F. Bruce Abel

Having lost $11,000 in my trading account in 2011, I feel like a new year gives a blank sheet with ample room for New Year's Resolutions.  As in the past I am reluctant to mess it up.  So far my positions are hedged to some or all extent.  So the daily change in value is small.  Plus, being in Manila so long, I am not at all as rabid about following CNBC in live time as this was impossible due to the time difference.  This is to the good. 

This will be the beginning of my third year of "recent trading" I believe.  I re-opened a Schwab account January, 2009, and I began again after the professional traders/investment managers proved incompetent in the crash of 2008-09.

Lots of action each year with no net profits, with one year at break-even and one year of down $13,000.  In addition to the loss in 2011 mentioned above.

Nevertheless I do not feel badly, (I also have a growing law practice), considering the difficulties everyone has been having with the market.  Yes, a strategy of following Cramer through the whole thing would have recouped from the "losses of 2008-2009," but I didn't have any losses in 2008-2009 as I was not in the market.  My wife, however, was, and her advisors suffered along with the general market with her investments.

My trading account varied from $25,000 (first year) to $50,000, with withdrawals as a safeguard from time to time.

More and more of my trading has been "hedged," using paired trades.  And less of the spur-of-the-moment variety.