Every headline and mention about 2008 seems to be the same: "good riddance." I, for one, am going to miss the ol' bugger. 2008 was a fantastic year. I'm going to miss it for a lot of reasons, but I hope 2009 has some fun in store for us as well.
Let me commence this first post of the year by making official my performance tallies for 2008; I have three accounts, and I'd like to cite the figures for the worst and best performing of them. The worst of them was my "big" account (my family's), which enjoyed a 180.5% return. The cool part is its performance relative to the S&P, which is a more impressive 356.1%. I'm afraid 2009 doesn't' hold the promise of such numbers.
Ironically, my IRA account was the big winner, with a return of 477%. The reason it's ironic is that I have every disadvantage imaginable in this account.
- No margin
- Cannot trade options
- Cannot trade e-mini futures
- Cannot short
Indeed, I can only trade cash-only long positions. And yet it's my biggest winner!
I think the reason for this is, frankly, I didn't have the opportunity to shoot myself in the foot with options (or, even worse, e-mini futures) that I had in my other accounts. In my boring old IRA account, I didn't have such luxuries. Even cooler, the high-water mark on my IRA was……December 31, 2008! It's a good feeling closing the year at a high (but that was the only account that did).
Here on Slope, especially during the summer, a lot of us would wring our hands about the $SLIX (that is, our fabricated indicator whose postulate was that big traffic on Slope meant that a bullish play was at hand). As the blog got popular during the autumnal collapse, $SLIX lost its meaning and, as trading volume shrieveled near year's end, traffic on Slope did too. I'm trying not to take it too personally.
The key thing to remember is that 2008 wasn't twelve months of wonderfulness for me. If you had examined my accounts back in May, merely seven months ago, you would have seen them in really sorry shape, because the mid-March to mid-May rally was devastating with an all-short portfolio. I got a lot more cautious after that which, in retrospect, damped my potential gains quite a bit.
In fact, looking back with 20-20 hindsight, it's obvious to me that I really blew the bearish opportunity of a lifetime by not taking full advantage of the October-mid November plunge, particularly in the Russell 2000. In a mere six weeks, indexes did something that might only happen once in several decades. So, regrettably, the caution I learned to embrace from my springtime wounds did me a great disservice with the autumnal index -plunge. I missed the boat in a huge way.
Now, in a nation where virtually everyone has a portfolio with a 40% loss this year, it's pretty pathetic of me to be beating myself up about this, but that's just me.
But the fact is that we're all equal again. My return so far is 0%. So is yours. So is Paul Tudor Jones'. The crowns on our heads come off, be they made of gold or thorns. Behold, the market makes all things new. And we have no one to depend on but each other, and no one to blame (or credit) but ourselves.
