Hello my name is Tate Dwinnell, founder of SelfInvestors.com and I have losses this year.  Yeah the SelfInvestors Model Portfolio while outperforming the S&P, is still down for the year.  I’m down 7.6% this year and have not played this market meltdown well. .. and I’m fine with that.  I wish that I could say I’ve been 100% short this market and bathing in dollar bills but I can’t.  It would be nice to say hey look at me, look how smart I am but I can’t. 

I know it’s a veeerrrrrryyyy long year.  I know that I didn’t do well for several months last year but still killed the S&P with a 30% gain.  Losses let me know I’m alive and human.  Without them I would have less incentive to hone my craft further and learn from my mistakes.  No excuses.  I did a good job of staying away from big losses in the small cap high flyers (such as solar) and did sell most of Google and all of Mastercard but rode some core positions (whats left of my Google, Cisco and Morningstar) too long.  I also took off my short trades much too early and got into a couple big cap so called defensive medical plays too early.  I didn’t expect the market to sell off so quickly this January without any kind of significant bounce.  The opportunity to put on a new round of shorts never came.  There was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

However, I didn’t killed and didn’t panic.  I was still in 50 – 60% cash the entire time and didn’t panic sell some good long term holdings at what could have been the bottom.  I’m in good shape to profit big once a new round of leaders emerge in a new round of leading industries.  It will take some time for that to happen but hey it’s a long year and I fully expect to greatly outperform once again.