Hell on Earth

As you can see I haven't posted anything in a long time... okay a very long time. In this time away have had the privilege of watching my stock portfolio go from bad to worse. I have not calculated the total percent loss in a while, but I believe the total damage is close to 50%. At this point I would like to express my concerns that no one- I mean no one- should be following my stock picks and I am terribly sorry if any unlucky soul has been.

After a person loses this much money in the stock market (or anywhere for that matter) they start to reflect on what they're doing and what they can do to turn this problem around. I have/tried/am done/doing this and have talked to my dad about what I can do to stop this massive outflow of money. Now my dad is far from an investment guru, but he has been around a while and knows his share about financial markets. He mentioned something called "high beta" stocks. This term refers to stocks that are highly volatile. In a highly volatile stock market, these stocks will go down close to double (or even more) what the average stock index will. These high beta stocks are easy to find because they are usually the ones that have gone up more that 100% in the last year. I found out the hard way, that owning these types of stocks in a scared market, you will quickly lose a lot of money.

My previous portfolio included:
Apple (appl)
Baidu (bidu)
First Solar (fslr)
Mosaic (mos)
Zix Corp. (zixi)

My current portfolio is:
Apple
First Solar
Mosaic
Short: Wynn Resorts (wynn)

I choose to keep the positions that I did because I believe that they are safer and will most likely rebound. However, I believed that about all my stocks and look where I am today.

On my next post I will give more information on my current portfolio and also give some ideas that I have for other stocks.