I have tracked my stats fully from January 2019, using both Etoro and the PI screener website.
I track my stats this way, because as I explained here on my history page, this is when I implemented my current trading strategy. It has worked very well for me over the years following my prior maverick style of trading, which caused me to initially make a bunch of money and then promptly lose it.
My current strategy yields an annualised return of 42.07%.
For the sake of transparency, I will also include my failure back from 2018. It will always display as a blemish on my trading history for everyone to see. Although, it does serve as a nice reminder of what can be achieved if you don’t give up.
Looking at these stats we can see some key trends:
First of all we can tell that my Beta rating (volatility compared to the S&P500) could be better. I consider myself a volatile trader and to others this may be an issue. However it allows me to capture much larger moves in the market. If I changed my style of trading to reduce draw down, it would also reduce my upside. So I make the choice for myself, not to prioritise this metric. As a beginner investor I accept that volatility causes fear, which causes panic. This is a bit of what I faced in 2018, however I’ve learned to develop a deeper understanding of the asset’s I hold. When considering volatility in your own trading strategy you could also consider using the Sharpe ratio metric. You can learn more about that here.
In the image above, we can take a look what my portfolio achieved each month since January 2019. It’s clear that my portfolio had much bigger gains to start with using this strategy, than it does now. It has levelled off somewhat to be more consistent. This is for a few reasons:
• In early 2019 the stock market recovered from it’s drop by the time May rolled around. This meant that some asset’s made huge moves which is something to consider in your investment plan so you could benefit from that too. I was able to repeat this in 2020 with the drop in the market caused by Covid. Despite having smaller monthly % gains, there was far less downside. I would attribute that to the speed in which money was pumped into the market to stimulate the economy by the Federal reserve.
• My portfolio is larger than it was back in 2019. This is because, not only has it compounded around 4.5x naturally, I also made regular deposits after 2018, of between 2% to 5% per month. This makes a huge difference over a longer time frame. I also prefer to spread my money between no more than 30 stocks, concentrated into a few core positions as this helps me to manage my risk tolerance. With a smaller account, I would advise holding around 10 stocks. Holding a couple of positions can make it more psychologically taxing, as you are very exposed to risk. However it’s worth considering on the flip side that holding too many positions reduces your chance of making a lot of growth. We call this over diversification.
• We can identify in the image above, that 2022 was a very weak year for me. I had a lot of draw down with very little relief to the upside. Unfortunately, this is something very common with my style of investing. During a bear market the beaten up stocks will be some of the most disliked stocks that no body wants a piece off. However, if they have great fundamentals, this makes them great buys for the long term; for the short term, not so much.
Stats were up to date as of 23/05/2024.
