It was a bear year. My trading account -11.5%. I took almost five full weeks off from trading. Markets mostly drifted lower. Precious metals had a minor rally to get gold to near unchanged for calendar 2022. Here are some ETFs for 2022:
2.4% SLV
silver
-0.8% GLD
gold
-19.5% SPY
SP500
-22.4% EEM
emerging mkt
-21.6% IWM
Russell 2000
-32.8% TLT
US20 yr
-33.1% QQQ
Nasdaq 100
These percentages might be slightly different from other sources, as I don’t include dividends, but are close enough for an overview. Compared to SPY or QQQ, -11.5 doesn’t look terrible.
Last year, I drew some criticism for not being up as much as the indexes. This year, I had slightly more in index investments and that was a bad place to be. My biggest losers included SPY QQQ. What I thought to be a safe position VCSH Vanguard short term bond etf was another big loser. As for individual tickers, AMZN, NVDA, META lead the loss parade.
Winners were small. Delta hedging worked out okay in AAPL and TSLA. Stupid trade of the year was messing with RSX, Russian stock etf. Trading is still halted. If and when it reopens, a 90%+ loss is anticipated.
Silver and cash equivalents were among the few winners for the year. However, GLD and SLV did not meet their intended purpose, which is to keep up for with inflation. Over many years that may smooth out, but this year wasn’t a good one.
Happy New Year to all. Hope 2023 is better than 2022.
