My Trader’s Journal is One Year Old Today
One year ago today I wrote my first blog post. I started off with $43k and now have $83k. All of that, minus the 4.21% loss I’ve had over the past 366 (leap year) days, has been from contributions we’ve made to our investing account.
According to Morningstar, here’s how I compare to the major indices’ returns:
- 12 month S&P 500 Return: -2.92%
- 12 month DJIA Return: +2.99%
- 12 month NASDAQ Return: -3.57%
- 12 month Russell 2000 Return: -10.86%
- S&P Midcap 400: -3.95%
I’m probably about where I would have been if I had split my investments among various ETFs. Some funds might have been up and others would have been down. I would have missed out on the fun I’ve had with this blog and with learning to be a better investor and would not be situated in a place that better prepares me for future years. I firmly believe that I’ll beat all the major indices again this year as I did in 2007, but understand that at any single point in time I may be lagging. Worrying about that will get me nowhere.
Along with the change in the amount of capital I have to work with now compared to a year ago, here are some other changes over the past year:
- I’ve changed careers from being a Project Manager to an IT Recruiter (for the 2nd time)
- We were in a Bull market when I started and now we’re in a Bear market (according to many).
- 350 days ago I didn’t know what an RSS feed was and now I have over 180 subscribers to my own feed.
- A year ago I didn’t have a long term plan and now I have a five year plan that has me targeted to stop working for someone else and only focusing in on investing.
- A year ago I didn’t know anyone who had similar investing ideas to help me improve my trading model and now I know many.
- A year ago I had no income from advertising and now I make $70-110/mo from Adsense, Feedburner and direct advertising agreements.
I have had more than 82,000 visitors since I’ve been tracking it on the bottom of each page starting in June 2007. Since changing jobs in January I’ve let my social networking slide as I’ve had to adjust my priorities to focus more on work, maintain as much investing research time as possible and still spend as much time with my family as I can.
Thank you all for reading and participating in my journey to better returns.
Comment by Kadena
The financial battle is an intense fight which can be well worth it in the end, with perseverance. For me, I’m glad to hear your blog made it 1 year, as I’ve always appreciated your efforts. Good luck, and thank you.
Comment by Options Strategery
These days, the most important thing is to live to play tomorrow. All in all, given the higher beta of your strategy (2x), a -4.21% vs a -2.92% SPX is not bad.
Comment by Alex Fotopoulos
True, it’s not bad. Of course I’m just aiming higher. I’ll have a better chance by next week’s option expiration to play a little more catch up. I’m trying to avoid looking back on moves like FNM where I could’ve had a few hundred profit instead of $2500+ loss if I had waited it out. Just that move alone would have me positive, I think.
Comment by b
thanks for putting all the effort into this blog. i just started learning about options a few months ago and use your site as a edu-tool. it’s also nice to read about a normal person’s experiences. well, you seem normal in print at least!
Comment by Alex Fotopoulos
Normal. That’s funny. Anyone interested in investing with options can’t be too normal, that’s why we can make more money than the rest.