Monthly Performance

Percentage gains - a slight lift on the last day of the month helped a little, as did some quite volatile stocks that are ignoring the current market conditions, such as DYE, CSM & MRX.

I include all expenses and income. I also adjust for all changes to capital - withdrawals and capital additions. I don't go back further because I only got my cashbook under control last financial year, although dollar value gains are reported for previous years in previous posts.

stevo
Note that although I mention some stocks above my systems would not be buying them now. I have had an individual buy a stock that I mentioned and then blame me when he lost money! We are all responsible for our own actions and decisions.

Obsessions, Yellow Roses & BNB

The 3 aren't related! I exited BNB this week for a small gain of 15%. It's the only exit signal I got last weekend.

I find myself browsing eBay and other online stores looking for CD's to listen to. Right now I have Jackson Browne Solo Acoustic Vol. 1 playing. I use my laptop as a remote and can search for whatever music is ripped to the network hard drive. Ripped to lossless format (FLAC) and played through my Transporter music is much more accessible.

It's only recently that I actually realised that I can be quite obsessed by an idea or an approach. I also realise that my obsessions can evaporate very quickly. My long term trading obsession doesn't seem to be going anywhere, although my desire to do research is quite low at the moment. I have no shortage of trading ideas to try out either.



Yellow Roses from Chicken Skin Music is a track I have always liked although many cannot understand why!

I'll post a picture of my trading room, ala ASX Gorilla ( http://theasxgorilla.blogspot.com/ ) although my room is very mobile these days - the lounge room, the kitchen, the veranda or work. Now where did I put my camera.

Yellow Roses say goodbye,

stevo

Small Caps Rule! (and another sell)

Out of Oakton on a profit exit (140% gain) - but it doesn't appear to be slowing down.

The Small Ords index has outperformed the All Ords by around 10% over the last year. Many people focus on stocks they know, many of them in the top 100. The biggest gains are in stocks outside the top 100 (ASX100) - those stocks we probably haven't heard of until they pop up in a scan of the entire market.

Stevo

% Profit by trade

Continuing on from understanding my trading results I plotted % profit for all trades since Jan 2003 up to the 1st quarter 2007. The worst % loser in dollar terms was quite small since I use % risk based position sizing. The same goes for the biggest % winner!

What I did find interesting was that I worked out I was turning over my capital 2 to 3 times. So $400,000 worth of capital typically made over $1 million worth of trades in a year. I suspect that this level of turnover is quite low for a trader. For example in 2005 I closed out $1.274 million in trades for a profit of $141,000 (excluding dividends). I averaged around $400,000 of capital in the market so return was around 35% for the year, plus some dividends and bank interest. There were a couple of months in 2005 where I had most of the capital in the bank - as can be seen from this post:
http://drawdown.blogspot.com/2007/01/money-in-market.html

Stevo