May 2008 - Account Performance

May was a tough month for me. As you can see in the chart below I started out pretty well, moved sideways for a bit only to then have a great string of winning trades which was then followed by a poor end to the month.

May 2008 Equity Curve:


I've consistently struggled with trading after a run of success. As soon as I get comfortable making money with certain sized trades I inevitably try to ramp up my size, and this of course leads to emotion which does NOT help my returns.

To combat the size problems my goal for June is to start real slow, stay at normal to less than normal sized trades and work my way to a consistent and profitable month with a higher return than the 4.43% I achieved in May.

Some statistics for May:
295 trades, 45.42% of them were profitable
Long trades: 152 trades, 74 profitable for 48.68%
Short trades: 143 trades, 60 profitable for 41.96%

Despite less than 50% of both my long and short trades being profitable in May I found a way to make money both long and short as long trades accounted for 60.4% of my portfolio gains and short trades accounted for 39.6%. Despite the gains my percentage of profitable trades were well below my year to date numbers, especially on the short side (YTD: 53% profitable). This is something I'd like to improve on in June.

YTD Results (through May 31):
Jan: +3.95%
Feb: -2.5%
Mar: +2.45%
Apr: +10.06%
May: +4.43%
TOTAL: +19.34%

Year To Date Chart:

Trading Performance - Stepping Up the Accountability

Pasted below are charts of my trading account's equity curve. A year-to-date chart and a separate chart for each month are included. In posting these charts I'm looking to address one thing: Accountability.

There are two facets of accountability at work here. First, accountability to the reader. I'd love to see portfolio metrics on every trading blog I come across. I want to know if the person posting is full of it or not. So to you, my 9 faithful readers, I'll be offering up my equity curve. You'll be able to tell if I'm trading like crap and you are crazy to listen to me, or if I'm doing unbelievably well and everything I am touching is turning to gold.

The second facet of accountability is to myself. I'm an exceptionally competitive person and placing my results here for the world to see is very likely to cause me to have a much smoother equity curve than I have had in the past. 2007 was a year where I experienced massive gains, only to lose them towards the end of the year. I won't let that happen in 2008 and if placing my results on the internet for all to see plays a small part in that then I'm all for it.

Year-to-date Performance +17.44%:


January 2008 Performance +3.95% (+3.95% YTD):

February 2008 Performance -2.5% (+1.34% YTD):

March 2008 Performance +2.45% (+3.83% YTD):
April 2008 Performance +10.06% (+14.27% YTD):


May 2008 (May 1 - May 14) Performance +2.78% (+17.44% YTD):