My Trading History

I was trying to think of the best image to explain my 2022 trading history.

Apparently the option of a suicide bomber jumping on the year was not appropriate as a google search.

FBI will probably be knocking on my door later.

I had only just started in the financial world and .. Yeah. It didn't work out.

Lost most of what I invested, had no strategy and tried to day trade blindfolded.

We all have a bad year. This was mine.

Let's just call it a learning year, Ok?

I ended the year -80%

After a hard 2022, I came up with my own concept for trading.

But for the first 3 months I (sensibly) decided to put a few hundred $ into the account, just to test the waters.

This was wise.

From January to March I lost half of that deposit.

After that I decided short term trading is not for me. I lose the money as fast I make it.

I modified my strategy to focus on longer term trends, generating a correlating thesis to my system in order to take trades.

Perhaps randomly, my first thesis was Uranium longs. I deposited some serious funds and put a sizable chunk into uranium ETFs, which made me a decent 30% return over 3 months.

Had I held those positions I would now be up about 480%, but of course I closed too early. Oops.

I then went long Semi-conductors through SOXL from September to November.

If you follow markets at all, you will know this was a brilliant trade. September was the only month the Nasdaq had a reasonable correction and I took advantage of this to buy cheaply.

But once again, such a great trade that I did not hold long enough.

I bought SOXL from the low 18's. It now trades at 60+ but I closed all positions before the end of 2023 at 30's.

I ended the year up roughly 55%, slightly outperforming the NASDAQ100.

So there were 2 lessons this year.

1. Don't focus short term.

2. Have confidence in your trades to hold.

Ah 2024...

This year (so far) can be defined by a lot of stubbornness.

Whilst tech companies absolutely dominate markets, small caps generally are flat or even declining.

Interest rates are still relatively high, and interest rate cuts are only partly on the table for future FOMC decisions.

All my portfolio is invested quite heavily in stocks that should benefit from rate cuts.

But so far the small cap Index, RTY and related ETF's such as TAN, TNA and XBI, are all flat for the year or decently down.

I have a very strong thesis for this trade and will likely be holding for the rest of year.

My portfolio is currently down about 18% from my net investments with reasonably high risk and volatility.

If my thesis plays out, RTY will reach 3k levels this year and my portfolio will return more than 350% net profit.

Until then...it's fairly boring.