2017 Year 652-66 Grade B-

I count 652 winners, 66 loser for the 2017 year. I am up about 18% for the year, which is right behind SPY. Overall, I am pleased. I’ll take +18% every time.

My best dollar winners over the course of the year:
BRKB NVDA TSLA SPG UNH

losers: BA PANW FL ULTA.

It was another remarkably calm market year. So many kept waiting for volatility to return, but for the most part, they were disappointed. So many on the Internet keep looking for a crash. Many lack the basic understanding that crashes are rare events. Real market crashes might be once every 20 to 30 years. Corrections, bear markets are more common. If we could time all the market hiccups we could print money.

Put sellers did very well, some call sellers saw losses. Many of my big loser trades involved sold calls.

Here are a few etfs and how they did in 2017:

EEM +34.6% emerging market equity
SPY +19.0% SP500, U.S. large cap

IWM +13.0% Russell 2000 U.S. small cap
GLD +12.8% gold

TLT +6.5% U.S. 20 year treasury bonds
SLV +5.8% silver

The main groups to lose money were bearish. One of these days, they will be right, but it wasn’t in 2017. Predictions tend to be for entertainment. Money management, risk management is where I tend to make my money. My predictions are no better than coin flips.