2017 has just ended. Just wondering how have the elite traders and investors on this forum have perform? Is it normal to lose to the S&P500 index? For me personally, I lost to the index big time although my gains were worth a few months of salary bonus.
+28%. In my retirement accounts, +22% in my trading account. So basically lower in my trading account than just an s&p etf. I blame it mostly on undisciplined stop resets.
That sounds fine for most portfolio to underperform the spx in a year it's been on a rampage. Most portfolios only have a portion allocated to stocks, even less to US stocks. Than it depends what part of the portfolio you manage actively and with what objective. Anyway here a (very) good year in USD, I like to keep track in euro as well, and it will be far less exciting in that currency as I'd sold most of them before EUR went up. In holidays now, so numbers not finalised yet.
Best year ever. Trading only ASX stocks, gold, copper, iron ore, coal, nickel, oil positions. There were moments my positions fell into the doldrums, at one stage about 2 months going nowhere, but this last month has been very good even though atm not in any gold trades and having considerable money parked on the sides awaiting. I'm hoping 2018 to be yet better again, have an Asus chromebook arriving this week from USA which I intend to use to set up a cloud based mobile stoploss system, just experimenting with an idea at this stage.
I had not-so-good year in ASX stocks although gains were still positive. When you refer to gold, copper, iron ore, coal, nickel, are they futures or ASX stocks?
You are better than me. This year, my most disastrous stock picks came from ASX. Some examples were GEM.AX (fell >20% on one fine morning) and DOW.AX (fell >20% on another fine morning). Just writing this reply brings back painful memories.
This year all the ducks were lined up.... Many years of trading experience. No longer working for the man. At the right place at the right time, ASX is resources populated with quality stocks. Decided this year to becoming more focused on becoming focused, and this has paid off muchly. Taking your eye off the ball will hurt your results profoundly. Money makes money, compounding trade wins bring in more profits. Trading systematically but discretionally, rinse and repeat on a trading plan which has me very happy. Patience to wait, then strike. Researched heavily this year into improving my system, many hours. Copious note writing and system writing, bit of algo writing, but most of my trades are not algo based, my algo stuff is when mkt is dead and I need to hunt for new prey. Amibroker.