Great topic @Valueinvestor0909. In regard to your throw away question once you realized you were only up 40% in 12 months (some of us are never satisfied - insert smiley face here): "It's not me. it's the market?" I think it's definitely you, so stand loud & proud. The market is definitely not up 40% in the past 12 months and your performance is exceptional, not market average.
We all take some time to get our portfolios into shape and that's me speaking from experience. I allocated my original $100k without thinking about it too much and got spanked by my poor SM performance for quite a few years while playing catch-up. Luckily, I was still focused on my real money IRL portfolios and didn't treat them the same way I did with my SM portfolio, otherwise I may have really had an issue on the home front!!
So, as we give our SM portfolios some more attention using the free research and advice from the SM members, some sound company valuations and investment theses and with the usual luck that is required (even though we always think we are geniuses when our portfolios go up and just plain had down by when they go down) most of us have rebounded to meet or exceed the market. I guess this is evident by the SM index performance versus market index performance being up approx 5%pa since inception.
Happy investing and thanks for the poll @Strawman, I'll head there now.
