Last Updated on January 3, 2008 by stlplace
My performance
The Scottrade account did beat the S&P 500 and Nasdaq (detail to be calculated…). This is pretty easy because the market did not go up much in the past year (3.5% for S&P and 9.8% for Nasdaq).
More importantly, learned the risk, portfolio management (weighting), IRA/401K/mutual funds, all from hands on experience and can not be measured by the numbers.
What went right
1) Sell the losers: XFML, SBUX
2) Ring the register on winners: HMIN
3) More focus, 3 or 4 stocks maximum in the portfolio; work on same stocks (MR) if it’s working
4) Basic research: reading F1/S1 prospectus, 10K, 10Q; using google spread sheet
5) Read the five stocks/investing books (listed in my aStore), learned a lot from the masters. I still need to complete Buffett’s book (a little harder) and Ken Fisher’s book (a little long).
What went wrong/lesson learned
1) Did not sell CROX before Oct 31 ER: if a stock went up a lot and its weight on overall portfolio increased dramatically, make sure ka ching some…
2) Speculate on small companies (GSIT) without much research