TIM: December Review

Tags: Monthly Review

TIM $14,327, Up 1.26% In December.
Not Much $ Earned, Just Lessons Learned.

Sure, sure, that’s a decent month, considering all the major indices were down 1%. If I was managing a fund, everybody would be cheering my ability to profit in the face of others’ losses. In reality, a 1% monthly gain is not only pathetic, it’s dangerous.

You see my competition isn’t the indices and they shouldn’t be yours either. The Wall Street system has gotten you to believe that 10-20% annual returns are great and that if you beat the indices, you’re a star. No. You’re not running some mutual or hedge fund (so you shouldn’t invest/diversify like one) and your life is no better whether you beat or trail the indices by 1%, 5%, or 20%/year. Whether you’re trading with $1,000, $10,000 or even $100,000, does it really matter if you make an extra $200, $2,000 or even $20,000 that year?

No, we’re trying to learn how to get wealthy here through our investments; we don’t collect fees based on our market outperformance. Hence, my competition is time. I’m trying to repeat my feat of $12k to $1.65 mil within 10 years and 1% monthly gains aren’t going to get me there. Don’t get me wrong, a 1% monthly gain is fine – sometimes there just aren’t any plays – but my problem is that there were plenty of plays (mostly solar plays), but my overtrading caused me to lose $ when I should’ve been on the sidelines (not to mention the risk I took on). I wanted to make money every day, so I could prove my theories are valid, that I’m not full of it and so my website would be more popular and my products would sell better. Instead, I showed why most people think trading isn’t for them and why most traders lose money. The only reason I didn’t lose money was because I’ve become so disciplined at taking losses. That’s the good news and hopefully I’ve at least taught you that.

Anyway, 49,000 unique visitors (a nice increase from November’s 46,000 visitors given that December is usually slower) watched me make 1% for the month. It’s all good learning for the future, I guarantee I won’t be trading as much in January as I’m determined than the Giants playing the Patriots to choose my trades carefully.

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