Today's a very special day for me. On November 3, 1999, I made the following announcement:
Please note that my profile has been updated to reflect a change in profession. I resigned my day job this morning and as of 11/17/99, will become a full time online investor... with Aunt Nancy's approval<g>.
Of course I couldn't wait until 11/17; I immediately became a full time investor and a part time employee. Since today marks the first anniversary of that transition, I'm going to publish the data that I have gathered to present to Nancy this evening for my 1st annual review.
Despite some "rookie" mistakes and a tough market in Y2K, the gross return on my G&K portfolio was 91.1% over the year. Subtracting withdrawals (salary), the net return was 73.9%. If I'm not mistaken, this should earn me another year on my contract and hopefully a bonus <lol>.
I feel much better prepared to manage my portfolio now than I was last year at this time. Here are a few things I'll do differently over the next 12 months:
1. Practice diversification within the family of Gorilla and Kings: I currently hold 6 stocks (ntap, sebl, qcom, cree, csco, and gmst - in order of weight), plus one pseudo index fund, qqq. Last year at this time I only had 1 (guess what it was <lol>).
2. Remain balanced: I am making a concerted effort to keep my largest holding to no more than 25% of my portfolio. The Gorilla and King Index has done extremely well since it began the year equally weighted among 10 components, while my own portfolio has suffered from overweighting in Q, even though I reduced my position by over 60% at the start of the year.
3. Reduce the use of LEAPS: LEAPS are not to be confused with stocks. They are volatile trading instruments, and should be treated as such. I will limit LEAPS to no more than 25% of my holdings.
4. Reduce my portfolio's beta: If I am successful in 4Q, I will sell a fair portion of my LEAPS and reallocate those assets to QQQ. I plan to write covered calls during the year against that position to generate income.
5. Limit ET's participation: He's a greedy devil, and while he's been pretty successful, I won't let him get his hands on more than 1% of my portfolio at any given time.
My thanks go to my wise and sharing threadmates who have helped me gain another year of freedom. I couldn't have done it without you guys.
uf |
