January 2011 Performance

I have increased my equity by 50% at the start of this year.  Though I am becoming more confident with myself as a trader with at least a few months of experience, the market isn't as good as it was 2 years ago (right after the subprime mess).

I will try to remain 20% (equivalent to my max hold to 1 stock) in cash on hand as my revolving fund.  One that could help me go in and out of a stock for better market timing.  Whenever I plan to shift my funds from one stock to another, this revolving fund would act as proxy and should be replenished as soon as I have finished buying and selling the 2 stocks.  This should add discipline to my trades.

For my first month of trading this year, it has been a tough one with recurring market declines.  Some even call it as the January effect.  Counting in the 25% increase due to added infusion of funds, I was able to get cash profits of only 0.56% of my total portfolio. 

January was a month for the 3rd liners, basically composed of speculative stocks.  At least I had a small bite with the "trash" play when I had a 1-day trade of ELI, and was rewarded with a 14% stock return.  However, I made a costly mistake with MPI, buying at its high.  I did some cut loss (not yet finished), which eventually narrowed down my month's profit margin.

Total equity dropped by 8%, mostly because of my hold on MPI and FDC.

Summary:
Cash gain:  0.56%
Portfolio gain:  -8%

Slowly but surely, I am trying to practice more with my TA with the use of different indicators aside from the common MACD and RSI:
DMI
STS
RVI
CCI
Parabolic SAR

I hope I could get better with this.

Here's a look on the latest chart on the PSEi.