A couple of your recent Greatest Hits, “stockstradr”:
[quote=stockstradr]
so here’s my annoying I-told-you-so, albeit a bit premature.
OIL. I told you all to buy oil, told you all to starting nibbling at about $37/bbl, and increase your stake if it hits $35/bbl, which it did.
So I’m well in-the-money on those bets.
Yet this year-end has me closing the year with my portfolio at a 52-week high with a net gain of 51% (excluding all 401K/ROTH contributions, but including all costs) so I’m happy with that.
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I thought gleefully, “Oh dear God: PLEASE continue to let my market trades enter stock markets filled with people like this discussing inanely obvious crap amongst themselves! (So I can continue to out-trade them and take their money)”
I just turned away from the pointless banter, and went and bought my oil at that price. Now this week we find oil is over $40/bbl and I’ve made loads of money again.
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You sell because people like me are telling you to sell, and we have great track records.
You listen because I saw the financial crisis coming three years ago so I successfully shorted the markets and so appreciated my 401K by 50% this year (including commission costs).
[/quote]
Now, I for one, do NOT find these self-congratulatory posts annoying, but rather find them bizarre and mildly entertaining.
I’m assuming you’ve heard of the following: Victor Niederhoffer, John Devaney, John Merriwether, (Nobel Laureate) Myron Scholes, Jeff Gendell, and Bill Miller. The one thing they all have in common (and there are MANY more like them) is that they had huge returns for relatively long periods of time only to entirely or almost entirely blow their investors up. Niederhoffer returned 40%+ annualized over 10 years then blew up entirely (and almost took Refco down with him). Bill Miller outperformed the S&P500 for 15 years and then his fund declined by 60%+. Jeff Gendell returned had two 100%+ years, but erased all of that and then some with a -80% year this year. His overall record is a shambles. And these examples are LONG term. Not a year (or two) like yours.
Here’s my point. You MUST know that a year or two’s (or three or four’s…) good trading returns are completely and entirely meaningless in assessing anyone’s true trading/investing prowess. And particularly without knowing what risks were taken in order to generate such returns. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that you’re not a complete fool or investing neophyte, so you must be aware of this fact.
And obviously such comments serve no purpose whatsoever for the other posters here (well, other than entertainment value on my part and perhaps a few others). There’s no added value, so they must be written on your behalf.
So… these posts of yours drawing attention to your recent successes (assuming you’re not making them up – again, I give you the benefit of the doubt) beg the questions: What need on your part do they fill? What point do they serve?
Other parts of some of your posts seem sensible. Like you, I’m intrigued with oil. (Which should be a contrary indicator for the short-term, as I learned long ago that I was not a good short-term trader, which is why I’m in PE. But I digress.) But then the blustery posts (“Ma! Look how much I’m up this year!”) make me scratch my head and wonder if, in fact, you’re just some enormously insecure clown seeking approval from anonymous posters on the internet.
So, as a student of the human condition, I gotta ask… What gives, man? Humor me.
