ouch! that's 2005.

Lazy bones all around. In medical terms, it’s called the “post-festive-holiday-syndrome” which mostly happens on people who need to come back to work between boxing day and new year’s eve, like me sitting here. Wish I could re-live 2005 again so that I could be a little bit smarter here and there with my stock-picking skills. Absolutely no advancement financially in 2005 and hopefully the portfolio would only end up flat compared with a year ago. Experience-wise, it’s a fruitful year. Time to review rights and wrongs in 2005!!! Hm…..Old-fashioned, but it helps.

Quitted too late on a long-time winner that had a substantial rally in 2003 and 2004. I knew the exit door was too small for everyone for these small caps but maybe, I had been sitting for too long on the wonderful ride up and I got all numbed at the end when you need to run for life. 25% down from the top and I got out. These are small caps, they bring you returns in folds but you’ve got to watch for the exit always. Major reason to have a flat return in 2005.

Fooled by small moves and blinded from the bigger ones. Irritated by the testing of major support for one and got out at the bottom of the range. It hurts even more when you find this one standing 22% above your exit point. Big trend was the Renmenbi revaluation and beneficial government policy directions for the company – kicked out by silly rumors on the street. Lesson – setting stop loss level is more of an art than science and don’t cry over spilled milk.

Made good use of other people’s advice. This is where e-banking can’t compare to doing trades physically at the bank. It was the bank manager I need to thank. The teller didn’t know how to do a trade in gold and her supervisor was called in to help. The trade was done finally and I got some gold in the portfolio. He apologized for the inconvenience as the teller had no experience in dealing with gold and had to keep me waiting. I asked him if there were many people doing trades in gold by then (this is the only bank in the city which still offers a trading account in gold!). Not many, I was told, in fact I doubt if I was the only gold account showing up at his branch for the past few years. Then, I was suggested, instead of getting no interest on gold investments, I might want to get into aussie dollars, euro or even these XYZ-linked-double-protection-credit-default-note with an enhanced interest rate. There you go, gold has never looked back since then. A big thank you to the bank supervisor - I added some more on the next day.

Reached out a few times on small caps and successfully cut loss at pre-determined level. This is the happiest thing ever and I’m really really glad that I was able to do that, even more than getting a handsome profit elsewhere. I AM ALIVE.

happy new year!