Performance

Vacation Alert:  The Night Owl is a self-confessed Olympaholic.  Whenever the Olympics come on TV, I'm there.  I watch the sports I really like, like volleyball, the sports I don't really care for like basketball, and the sports I ordinarily wouldn't even think about, like rowing, weight lifting, or watching big guys hustling around a track, tossing cannon balls or chucking spears.  All of which is to note that the Olympics is coming right up in July.  So for two weeks, I'll be on vacation and glued to my TV set.  I know it's crazy, but I hope my readers will indulge me a little time off.  Thanks!

Performance:

Here are my performance stats for the first six months of 2012.  The first two columns are for my trading account.  The next, "ESFT", is the ES Fantasy Trader.  Following that I've now added the results for my IRA.  The last is the Dow, my reference benchmark that I try to match or beat.

 Date    Trading, Month  Tr. YTD  ESFT YTD   IRA YTD   Dow YTD

1/31/12       7.41%        7.41%   -0.50%     6.18%     3.41%

2/29/12       3.67%       11.35%    7.88%     9.02%     6.02%

3/31/12       1.76%       13.31%   29.88%    10.05%     8.16%
4/30/12       2.35%       15.97%   41.75%    10.90%     8.17%

5/31/12      -1.92%       14.23%   26.63%     4.91%     1.45%

6/30/12       4.33%       19.17%   40.38%     2.80%     5.44%

It's not often that people are willing to share their results online, so here's a few I noticed this past week:

"My conservative-growth portfolio is currently up 11.9% year-to-date, while my aggressive portfolio is up 14.1%. By contrast, the S&P is up just 6.2% so far this year. I try to keep about 25 positions in each of these portfolios at any given point in time."

Pasted from <http://www.marketwatch.com/story/sell-everything-2012-06-28>

"Sound Advice’s record reflects its recent rally. Over the year to date through May, the letter is up 6.4% by Hulbert Financial Digest count versus 5.08% for the dividend-reinvested Wilshire 5000 Total Stock Market Index."

Pasted from <http://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-correction-is-a-buying-opportunity-2012-06-28?link=MW_story_investinginsight>

By any metric, I'd say we're doing pretty well.  In fact, at the current rate this would be my best year yet.  I was up just over 30% in 2009 and 2010 and down 1% last year.  Right now, we're on track for a 38% year.  I know, I shouldn't say anything, but the numbers are what they are  Actually, even a 19% return is pretty good for a whole year, and I'm seriously considering just taking the rest of the year off... nah, who am I kidding - I'm hooked :-).