Keeping an Open Mind

As my readers know, I do follow (and occasionally comment) on Ed's Talking Stock blog.  While I have documented before that Ed's approach is not my cup of tea (or coffee for that matter); some of the discussion about short term trading has interested me.  I decided in October to take a very small part of my portfolio (in my IRA) and stick my toe in the water.  The amount is under 2% of my trading portfolio (that I generally discuss on this blog) and is under 0.5% of my overall investments.  What I am saying that if it doesn't work out, we will still have a roof over our heads.

The board often posts real time trades and results and some people have had a pretty good track record.  As my readers know, I am a stickler for keeping careful track of where I have been (and hopefully know where I am going).  So I have created a "Talking Ed Scorecard" to follow my trading activities.  I have made five trades so far, and amazingly, they have all been winners (maybe I should have allocated more!).

As always, my shares are multiplied by my standard factor to give me some semblance of privacy.

Date	Starting Balance	Stock	Shares	Buy	Sell	Gain/Loss	Ending Balance	Cumulative Change
10/18/12	25,000	DUST	1,000	$25.32	$26.69	1,358	26,358	5.4%
12/5/12	26,358	UCO	700	$26.40	$26.49	47	26,405	5.6%
12/11/12	26,405	UCO	700	$26.17	$26.88	479	26,884	7.5%
12/13/12	26,884	NUGT	2,500	$10.79	$10.85	149	27,033	8.1%
12/20/12	27,033	NUGT	2,000	$9.34	$9.97	1,240	28,273	13.1%