- Keep your portfolio simple and easily to understand. I use excel to track my portfolio and trades but my mistake is not because I did not update it but rather the manner in which I recorded the information made me confused. Imagine, I can't even deduce my initial investments let alone my full year returns.
- Be patient. I won't say that I buy/trade on impulse rather because of my eagerness to buy that stock, I will buy it at a premium. I bought PSC at $0.15 when the average price is only $0.11. To make me feel worse, $0.15 only occurs for that particular day in 2007 (before the share consolidation took place). It's also my biggest loss for the year.
- Buy and Hold. Don't get me wrong. Buy and Hold is good only if you have done your research on the stock but my mistake is to Buy and Hold blindly. I manage to apply for 1 lot of CapitalRChina and the share price ran up all the way to $3+. While I don't aim to sell it at the highest price, I held on without realizing that CapitalRChina has been overpriced. I finally sell it at $2.10, when I can stand to gain at least a cool $1K more.
- Not doing my own research. Yes, the classic mistake on buying stocks base on recommendations. I only start to read up on the stock only after I buy it. Reason being, I don't want to regret not buying now.
By: Derek Lim
My 2nd year into stocks and it has been a pretty messy year. I applied for almost half the IPOs this year thinking that I can make a quick buck, tried contra, applied for rights, use my CPF to buy stocks and buying on broker's recommendation all with mixed results. I'm fortunate that I did not suffer too much a loss because 2007 has been a relatively strong year but I'm determined not to repeat the same mistakes again as I'm very sure that I will get burnt real bad one day.
Lessons Learnt: