Heavy Trading Helped Me Little During This Downturn

Yesterday I looked back at my activity over the last 30 days to see if I'd have been better off doing absolutely nothing. I've posted privately about my buys and sells and the rationale. This spreadsheet (called 2007-08-22.30D.Analysis) shows the P&L from each transaction through the close Wednesday. I've also included a hypothetical P&L, assuming a purchase of the SPY at that day's closing price instead of an individual stock.

Buying individual stocks vs. the SPY had a better outcome, but the real benefit came from selling a long time holding that had become a short favorite of hedge funds. It had a big pop, almost certainly on short covering, and I sold. Lucky me, it's down 15% since then. Not including taxes and commissions, I've made about $600 on the names I bought, saved about $4,000 on the names I sold and would have made about $90 had I bought the SPY instead of individual names.

So what's the takeaway? Other than one fortunate sale, I'm not much better off. Clearly, 30 days makes little difference. When markets get volatile the urge is tremendous to "do something." The press and brokerages and even politicians are only too happy to feed doom and gloom into the message machine. I'll try to remember that next time I get the urge to "do something."

Comments

[m3kw]

For me, I should do "something" if i know what i'm doing and if i have enough info to take advantage of making a move.

For me in the past monoth, it was changing to a tight stop when sub-prime setiments got worse. Buying back when it got better...read tons of news and gauge.