On Jan 2, 2018 I walked into Melanie’s office and told her I had set a goal for myself to see if I could double my small, trading account IRA account in one year (achieve a 100% return). An ambitious goal but something that is doable with good risk management, some leverage, active trading and of course must include a dash of luck and a cooperative market.
With 2018 now in the rearview mirror and a tally of the results I have to come clean, I did not achieve my goal. In fact, I was far below it. Disappointing no doubt as at one point in the year I was up more than 70% with about 40% of the year left to go I thought it was going to be a slam dunk. I had it all mapped out, I was going to sell everything once I hit that 100% mark and sit in cash and wait for December 31. But, alas, Q4 happened. I didn’t react fast enough to the rapid change in sentiment and so I fell hard with the market. Deal with it big boy, the market is talking and doesn’t care what I want or think. Oh yah, the “Woulda-Shoulda-Coulda” game is a waste of emotional and brain capital too so don’t do it. Its non-productive. If you don’t like the results, change your process.
My return for the year was 25.7%, not bad as I outperformed the SP500 by almost 32%. But those that know me understand “not bad” is not what drives me. So, being the uber competitive individual I am, I will, once again, set another goal to double my account for 2019. The odds are I will fail even worse than I did this year. Why? Because I am human. 2018 provided me the opportunity to fly under the radar with only one person knowing my goal. No external pressure or embarrassment if I failed, just my pride was at stake. You see the sad thing is as humans we have a tendency to act differently the more sets of eyes that are scrutinizing what we do, especially when money is involved. Even though I have the same set of trading rules, because of emotions that drive decisions, I am more than likely going deviate from them even though I know I should not***. Hopefully my genetic stubbornness, adjustments to my process and most importantly my real goal for doing this can keep my emotions in check. I want to make it clear, if I achieve the goal it’s not because I want to gloat or brag, or even because I want a bigger IRA (although I don’t mind this), instead I have something that is way more important to me. I want all clients and readers to know beating the market (and hopefully substantially) is doable in spite of Wall Street’s mantra it’s not possible. If Wall Street is too dumb (and this has nothing to do with intelligence) or lazy, that doesn’t mean it’s not possible. Peter Brandt taught me this and it changed my life. My goal is to do that same for some of you.
Let’s be real. Can beating the market be done every year? Nope, not going to likely ever happen every year over a long run by anyone let alone me. All of my mentors and people I follow and compare methodologies and processes with do it regularly, but not every year. Each of them has experienced underperforming years, some terribly so. That is going to occur with random markets, it’s inevitable. And what is a common trait is that those individuals become better when they fail. They key-in on and learn from their mistakes/failures, something all of us should do if we want to get better at anything in life. They are also in a continuous loop, never staying idle or complacent but always improving. To be a successful investor all that is required is 1) have a process that provides positive expectancy 2) insure steadfast discipline following the process, 3) access to multiple markets to invest in (more than just stocks and bonds) and 4) an unwavering desire to outperform (a politically correct way of saying being an overly competitive pain-in-the-^%$.
Maybe this year.
Any doubters feel free to email me as I will be more than happy to provide a validation of trades and account values. And no, in case you were going to ask as others already have, I can’t do this for anyone else’s account. Sorry. On the other hand, if you would like to learn how, please send me an email as I’d love to share with anyone what I have learned (what’s the old Chinese proverb about teaching a man to fish?).
***If you want to learn more about this human trait, there is a really interesting and true investment story you can read, just google the “turtle traders” or email me and I can send you an ebook.