I did extremely well in the stock market this year.
My line is the purple one, 2nd from the top on the right. NASDAQ beat me, but I beat the S&P 500 and DOW. How did I do so well? I don’t really know. Mostly I invested in an ETF called ESGV, which is a total stock market fund, minus stocks that deal with pornography, guns, and tobacco. So I did as well as the stock market. Nothing really surprising there. I also dabbled in picking stocks. I did miserably. You can see the lag starting in April to when I gave up in June. Recently, I have been buying call options on stocks that I think are going to go up. Call options are nice because there’s a fixed amount of money that I can lose, but an infinite amount of money that I can gain. That’s the idea anyway.
On a rolling 3 month average, it’s pretty much a wash. Nothing exciting above and beyond the rest of the pack. That peak in October is when I was holding onto an ETF that traded in gold mining stocks. There was some sort of bonanza for a few days. Some political upheaval. I was congratulating myself, patting myself on the back for a job well done. I picked the lucky numbers in the lotto and that makes me a genius! I happened to be off work that day. I was watching the stock sky rocket. I could have sold, but I was too busy adjusting my monocle. Then a few days later the bubble popped. As it always does. I sold. I made a profit, but not as much as I could have.
On a rolling 6 month basis, it’s basically another tie.
Again I’m doing as well as the NASDAQ.
This is where it falls apart. I’m now in 3rd place.
This is really embarrassing. I don’t know what I was doing 3 years ago. For a verrrry long time, I actually lost money in the stock market while everyone else made money. I’m even more distressed because of the opportunity cost. Instead of earning 20%, I earned just barely broke even. If I had just invested in the total stock market, I would be up so much more by now.
This is all well and good, but my investing horizon is 30 years. I don’t care if I have two years of 30% return if it means that in three years I have 0% return. The only metric that matters to me is my 30 year return.
Look for another update next year!