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

March Quarter

Not the best quarter. I've posted a yearly chart as well as the quarterly. The equity line is looking a little shaky for the start of this year. There are some early signs of life in the market - let's see what the rest of 2008 brings.

stevo

March quarter, systems and competition

I thought I would look at how my portfolio was performing in preparation for the end of another quarter. I plotted my closed trade equity curve and discovered that the equity curve hadn't done much at all since I last posted one below.

I couldn't see any difference because there has only been 2 closed trades since the last posting at the end of January and the gains and losses have been so small that they had little impact on equity.



I have mainly been trading one system for the last 5 years, although I have tried to introduce new ones at times. I keep coming back to a system that I am comfortable with, although in testing it may not be as profitable as some others. A few others trade my favourite system and to reduce competition against them I developed yet another system, currently called 50%, although I will change the name soon. I basically took my favourite system and stripped it of the bells and whistles.

Competition in the market against others probably isn't that big a problem. For starters there is some discretion in stock selection and this has resulted in quite a bit of variation in portfolio makeup. This has resulted in my brother being up around 15% (including open trades) for the current financial year, whilst I am struggling to get 5%. He has IPL and CEY in his portfolio from October last year, whereas I don't.

I will keep my favourite system for my super fund and make the new 50% system the system of preference for the portfolio reported here. I tested both systems combined and weighted trades towards the new system. So the 50% system has priority and, if any money is left, it goes to "old faithful". I am finding that I will make more if I trade a little more, although the ride will be bumpier.

Since I nearly went to cash it's like starting up the portfolio again. System startup is always a difficult time.

Happy trading,

stevo

1st Quarter 2007 results

I made 3 sells and no buys (I had to pay some tax) I have some cash to make some buys in the next week.