2011 in review

What a year, volatility was king, I don't mind the markets being closed for a few days over Christmas and New Year, I don't have to watch my portfolio get bounced around. Your's truly has four stocks in his portfolio at the moment and two tanked this year (dropped by more than 40% ), one's done nothing but oscillate between my entry price and drop as far down as 20% below entry just to bounce back. My star pick over the last 2 years has been Silver Lake Resources (SLR) it's kept my faith that money can still be made in the market. Ironically what caused the share price to really move in the last 2 months was not the reason I got into it. I got in because of their substantial gold reserves but the share price rallied on the discovery of a large copper deposit at one of their tenements. I'm of the view that gold will really appreciate over the next few years due to all the currency debasement going on in the world and that's why 50% of my portfolio is invested in gold producers. I'm still waiting for the pay off, lol.

Seems like a lot of market participants have packed their bags and called it quits in the stock market, they'll be back like a crazed dog chasing a moving car. The average daily turnover in the ASX is $5 billion well short of the pre-GFC turnover of $8 billion dollars plus. I read that in order for the ASX to rise some $7.5 billion dollars plus needs to trade on a daily basis.

Some readers have requested the return of some reports in particular the "Stocks within 5% of 52 week highs" and the "Daily short selling" report. I should be able to accomodate these requests. Any other requests while I'm at it?

A new report I'm looking to implement is stocks that close above and below their 200 day moving average. It's a technical tool used by a lot of traders to signal a change in a long term trend of a stock or commodity. I did some research regarding this indicator and found a number of stocks that either sky rocketed after closing above their 200 day moving average or plunged after closing below their 200 day moving average. I guess it's because a lot of professionals are using this technical indicator as we as all the automated trading systems are programmed to act on it, who moves first wins.

That's it for now, Merry Christmas and happy new year!