2015 was a bad year for me, as it was the year of loss and I was struck with many "value traps" including OUE, M1 and took losses with Wee Hur and a few unlucky trades like Apple & DXN SP500 BEAR3X.
A lesson that I kept forgetting is to cut loss when my entry reason (typically technical chart setup) no longer works! I tried to kid myself by turning it into long term play, at some points I had to recognize that fundamentals were deteriorating which happened for Wee Hur and had to cut loss and face reality.
Another was, when my technical views were right, for the case of Apple, but market shaked me out; I was unable to handle the emotional upset & re-enter, thus missing the spectacular run in May 2016.
Fortunately I managed to recover the losses, and made a gain of about $10K over the past 4 years. Bulk of the gains were through CPFIS, thus it was locked up, but this year I made a gain of about $3k which I managed to close by year-end 2016.
In 2016, I started tracking more indepth in terms of the amount of gains I managed to capture from each counter's channel, while majority were positive gains, I still had about 31% of them that were losses. That's the normal dealings that happened for trading, and I'll do well to manage it like a business and not hold on to obsoleted stocks holdings (beyond my cut loss risk limit).
A = 30%+ of channel
|
10
|
28%
|
||
B = 20%-30%
|
7
|
19%
|
||
C = 10%-20%
|
6
|
17%
|
||
D = 10% or less
|
2
|
6%
|
||
F = Loss
|
11
|
31%
|
||
Total
in 2016
|
36
|
trades
|
||
I also started to track performance quarterly beginning from 2nd quarter, as monthly was too short when most positions were still open while yearly is too long.
Q4
|
$2,923.62
|
Q4%
|
2.19%
|
Q3
|
-$3,073.21
|
Q3%
|
-2.30%
|
Q2
|
$2,043.01
|
Q2%
|
1.53%
|
In quarter 3, I made a wrong bet on S&P500 through DXN SP500 BEAR3X (SPSX), the result was a loss of -$1331.87; there were few other bigger losses such as Wee Hur which after I held for almost 10months, caused me -$2,315!
At the time of this writing, I managed to sold all my holdings on 13 Dec 16, and do not see myself going into equity markets soon. Even if I do, the positions would likely close next year thus I wrote this earlier review of my past 4 years of learning.
Going forward into 2017, I hope to beat CPF 4% risk free rate (even better & hit the professionals' rate of 10-20% return). To do this, I have to stick to a habit routine of market research & study... Hopefully become wiser and better able to differentiate change of trends & pullbacks.
