Friday, October 10, 2008

Update


As you can see, I removed all the goals from the sidebar. We are so far from them there is little point in tracking them. When I went into the market earlier in the year when it was down 20% in the US and 25% in Australia, I figured there might be 10% downside from there and I was prepared to handle it. Now the market is down 40% from the peak, so I miscalculated. At this point we are very battered by the market but can still survive. I'll report on September together with October. It's going to be interesting after the second severe bear market in a decade whether a lot of the proponents of indexing into stocks, and mostly US stocks change their tune. I know that I will be a lot more cautious in investing in the future after being mauled twice by bear markets. I'm not going to go to the opposite extreme of what I've been doing though, rather making sure I am diversified and not using much leverage.

I also removed the word "trader" from my profile. It's time to get back to my previous career and investing patiently for the long-term. Some people can be highly successful traders. I'm not one of them.

6 comments:

enoughwealth@yahoo.com said...

Wuss ;)

The road to poverty is paved with good intentions and plans that didn't work out exactly as planned.

Anonymous said...

Moomin, i am sorry to hear about your loss. As you did ,i lost a lot of money in my Retirement account and my personal account - about 30% this year. it was the first time in my investment career that buying on the dip did not work.On another note it may be for the better not to become a stock trader by profession. I think it is one of the toughest ways to make a living. I recommend you talk with your wife about what you are going to do in the future.

Best wishes
clownbucks@yahoo.com

Anonymous said...

I've been down this path too. Seems like a good life, being a full time trader, whereas in reality it is probably one of the most emotionally difficult things to do and nearly all traders end up washing out. Be the best economist you can be, you'll make a lot more money in the long run and be a lot more satisfied with life.

Anonymous said...

Hey congrats on knowing that about yourself and being honest about it; it's not often one hears someone say 'I am not going to do this anymore, I am not good at it'; especially from a man (not meaning to male bash, but I tend to hear way overconfident statements from men and way underconfident statements from women).

frugal zeitgeist said...

Yup, I caught it in the shorts, too. Nothing any of us can do except pull ourselves together and move on.

Anonymous said...

Hi mOOm,

I'm emailing you in regards to an email I sent to you last month about a partnership, have you had a chance to think about it?

If you have any questions or would more information, please advise me and we can go from there.

Kind Regards,
Andrew Knight.
Website Manager
Banking & Finance Division
Asia-Pacific Region

OMG.com.au (Australia) Pty Ltd
E: andrew.knight@omg.com.au