I am going to lay 2014 bare, fairly and without playing pretty. 2014 was an enormous lost opportunity and, indeed, and calamity of masterful proportions. I do this to put it behind me, log it, and prepare to rise above it.
2014, I ended down 33%.
2014 started out as one for the history books. After pacing 28% in 2013, my book exploded to the upside (and by no means was that an exaggeration, if you were following my positions). I had such a hot hand, with names like BAS and HCLP doubling in a matter of months.
I sat out the tech sector carnage in the spring, unaffected by it. I made money even as others languished.
And what may come as a surprise, I actually called the selloff in both oil and the underlying stocks. In August, penning a self-reflecting piece on how disconnected I was from the real world, up 25% for the year while others were holding on for dear life, I deduced that I should sell out of much of my holdings, if only to reorganize and one up fate.
Then, what may be equally surprising – no, the next sentence is not “why didn’t I listen to myself!?” or equally stupid nonsense – I did sell out of half of my oil and energy positions.
That’s what makes this story so strange. I liquidated BAS from a 25% holding down to 10%. I dropped HCLP from almost 30% to 15%. I trimmed everything. I had 50% cash riding into this bloodbath.
And it still didn’t help.
Yes, I was buying the drop at intervals, but that only accounts for a fraction of the total damage. Maybe somewhere between 5-10%. The other 20-25% mutilation was from 10-15% positions dropping 50%-90% in the span of 90 days or less…
To quote the late J. Ogden Armour, whom I ominously wrote about just before it all happened, “I lost money so fast, I didn’t think it was possible.”
That is it; it’s all on the table. 2014, the year that should have been. Where I let a 25% gain turn into a 33% loss, and more or less had my balls cut off in public.
Good riddance 2014! I hope Venezuela at least collapses totally, as some sort of fucked up consolation prize.
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