Have done some calcs, since mid March this year, the beginning of the journal, my portfolio has grown a measly 1.5%. Not impressive by any standards, the main reason for poor result is I made the decision to rideout the gold pullback retracement. Nevertheless it is what it is. The actual trading result is slightly higher as I'm never 100% engaged with portfolio into positions at any one time.
Frankly, the hardest thing I find in position trading is holding through the volatility. My swing trader brain absolutely rebels at it, but Daal made a very strong case for it in his Global Macro Trading Journal, and I must say I have profited from it. It is sickening to see a 5% drop in one day when Kim launches a missile or Trump Tweets nonsense. It is hard to see my TWTR holding go from $20+, a nice profit, to <$16, a loss, on the earnings release. I curse myself for not taking profit. Yet, I regret trading options on FB when it was $48, had I just bought the stock and held, I would have tripled my money and more. My very first year trading, I traded the Thai stock market. I made something like 26%, and I was rather disappointed. My Yank friend with a degree in finance scolded me for being down. He asked me to research how many funds had beaten the Index, which I had. As always I find a way to stay grounded. I had started by trading 40+ stocks on the SET50, enlarged to 90+ on the SET100 as I grew comfortable. Had I just bought and held the top 4 stocks in my watchlist, in that one year I would have made 500% profit. Every time my swing trader brain screams, I remind myself of that and all Daal has written.
Thank you for the feedback, really appreciate comments. My big problem is this in my thinking. The market is imo overstretched, PE's are high. It is quite difficult to find stocks which have low PE's and which are going anywhere. Therefore if I were to buy and hold as it were any well behaved stocks, am afraid I'll be buying near the top. The only solace I can find atm are the resource stocks, copper, gold etc which have recently come up out of bottoms. However, if you look at gold atm, right where we are now on price, gold is sitting now where it was in mid 2013, early 2014, early 2015, early and late 2016 and since April of this year. It's a rocky crappy ride. In actual fact I hate trading gold because it is a pure bitch. No, I'll reword that, a purebred mongrel. Copper is better and I have been holding 3 copper positions for a number of weeks now. So I hear what you say, but I'm forced to trade the trends as much as possible. I trade another person's account, that is make the calls to them, they pull the trigger. If I hold through a drawdown I cop a right earful " I'm losing money" bleating constantly. It's not 12 months yet that I have been trading more or less fulltime, that is, no longer employed, trading is it now. The Australian market is cantankerous, even when overseas gold and or copper prices rise, it's not uncommon to see our prices fall. This goes for other sectors/indexes as well.
I see your point. I have an account with IB America so I have access to great ETFs to express my views. Country specific, regional, sectors etc. It has served me well, and even though I don't trade enough every month to avoid fees, nett I'm better off. The big effort with it is reading extensively and keeping track of economic data. The latter I do anyway as I actively trade FX and I think it's key. I know, people love to say price reflects everything, get your nuts ripped off a couple of times on a data release and you learn reality
The ASX200 is currently now where we were in March of this year and only a tiny fraction above January level. Same with XMM, Australian mining index, now we are just a fraction above late January level. For me, this year has been a struggle to get any traction. Still, having it difficult isn't a bad thing, just makes one leaner and keener.
Correction. 7.5% return since mid March, forgot to allow for a cash withdrawal of 6% at the end of June.