Rediscovering My Trading Instinct

I thought I already buried the trader in me.

I entered the Philippine stock market in 2015 with a long-term mindset. It was then the peak of the bull market. I was clueless at that time. I thought I was a genius because all the issues I bought were winning.

However, I observed a scenario that I was not prepared. I saw my portfolio gaining 500.00 to 1,000.00 PHP every morning only to see it disappear in the afternoon. After a week, I decided to shift from a long-term investor to a short-term trader. I didn't foresee that I was heading into a financial disaster.

I forgot the exact month when the bull market ended. I think it was around March 2015. At least, I had a three-month experience of how it feels to be in the bull market.

When the bear market started, no matter how cautious my choice was in selecting a stock, seven out of ten were ending in a loss. To make the long story short, I ended 2015 with a 49% loss in my portfolio. That's equivalent to 98,000.00 PHP or close to 2,000.00 USD at that time. That's huge for a small account of 200,000.00 PHP or 4,000.00 USD.

As a result of that disastrous experience, I started to study technical analysis. It was then that I learned the basics of Elliot Wave Theory, Mark Minervini's Volatility Contraction Pattern (VCP), as well as the use of moving averages and Fibonacci. Since then, my results changed. This is how I described in December 2019 the transformation of my trading strategy:

At last, after 5 years, I am now able to keep my trading records. The months of January, March, May, and June to September were profitable for me. On the other hand, except for October, my biggest loss for the year was 6.39% month to date; the months of February, April, November, and December were also losing months, but just 1% and less. I thought that I would end 2019 with more than a 50% gain, but the last three months were tough, from October to December, reducing my year-to-date gain from 43.80% down to 31.93%. Source

Keeping a journal and sticking to my technical analysis made my succeeding years profitable. The bleeding stopped and beginning 2016 to 2021, though minimal, my years ended with consistent gain. Even the pandemic year opened a trading opportunity for me. Unfortunately, the entry of Omicron seemed to crash the stock market at that time. The volatility stopped and almost the entire issues in PSE appear dead.

In August 2021, when I providentially stumbled upon Hive, that was also the time I left the Philippine stock market except for holding one Telecom stock.

So all in all, I have been in the stock market for almost 8 years. Those were the years when I was a crypto basher. Realizing the real character of cryptocurrency, I think comparing the two markets is ridiculous. Or perhaps as I said in my blog post, the reason why I came up to this conclusion is because my first encounter in cryptocurrency is not with the "mooning" projects but with Hive. As a result after 11 months on Hive, I gained a total of 78.88% ROI. And take note, this happened during a Bear Market!

This article went longer than I expected. I have never told yet the reason for the awakening of my trading instinct. I think that will be a topic for the next post.

Grace and peace!

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