St Bees Island

Not a bad spot to drop anchor for the night. I went for a kayak around the boat - lots of tortoises. We are anchored in a passage between St Bees Island and Keswick Island. There was not much wind when we left Mackay but it will pick up later in the week. It's probably a good thing since Mrs Stevo is on board and she is not a keen sailor. We will head north somewhere today, depending on the wind.

I am sure that the markets can wait for me, they probably won't even miss me! I sold a few on Friday before the close and there are no buy signals at the moment. I don't mind being mainly cash at the moment.

I will post some charts when I get a moment, but it's not been a good start to the current financial year. That makes it a good time to go sailing. The boat is a 54 foot Hanse fitted out with more electronics then the Starship Enterprise - I bet they didn't have internet on board. All the more to go wrong though and you need a degree in electronics to sail it. Fortunately I'm not the skipper.

stevo
(able seaman & cook)

Yearly Performance

The yearly chart shown above gives a different view of trading performance from 2003 to June 2008. It good to step back and look at the big picture.

The last bar also contains substantial open profits. As I often mention percentages are difficult to calculate, but average returns are much better than the returns I would get out of commercial property - and lots less hassle.

2008 is looking pretty average compared 2007. I did add substantial sums of money throughout 2007. I haven't included bank interest or dividends to these results, they are just an added bonus.

I have cut back the number of trading systems from 4 to 2 systems. The main system has been running since 2003.

All systems are long term weekly trading systems. I don't short stocks and I don't use leverage, not because it's a bad thing but just because I don't feel the need at the moment.

stevo

Trading Results - January 2003 to June 2008

The following charts show actual trading results for my portfolio from January 2003 up to now. This is over 5 years worth of trading on the Australian Stock Exchange using weekly trading systems, long only trades.

The quarterly closed trades histogram shows periods of little activity, with long term trades easily going 3 or more quarters. The last bar shows Q3 2008 and consists of all open trades.

Whilst Q2, 3, & 4 of 2007 show lots of profit taking in Q1 & 2 of 2008 I gave some of those profits back. The systems buy signals turned off for nearly 5 months from November to March so I also managed to accumulate some interest in the bank account.


The equity curve shows the drawdown for the first 2 quarters, as well as the open profits going forward. It actually looks worse than it felt, since the open trades offset the closed trade drawdown over the 6 month period. I am not going to try plotting daily or weekly open equity curves which would show a different picture again.

A year ago there was a much different mix of stocks in the portfolio. The current portfolio consists of roughly 61% Energy sector, 34% Materials, 4% Utilities, and 0.38% David Jones (Mrs Stevo likes the shareholder discount card!). The one stock (EWC) in the Utilities sector holds power stations somewhere in Asia - I know now because I just looked! It's hanging on by a thread and could easily be an exit shortly.

I am surprised by the strength of the coal miners. I have MCC in another portfolio and it's well past the magic (in my mind anyway) 100% gains mark in less than a year. Unfortunately I didn't put it in this portfolio, although coal stocks do feature. Iron ore minors also feature prominantly and something called New Hope Corporation (Great name - I think it's a coal miner) looks promising on the chart.

stevo