I’m the only Investor on Twitter who loses Money !!

Tweet

Lots of People on Twitter etc. are extremely helpful with Tweeting out Stocks they have been buying and selling - which can be great for drawing attention to New Ideas of Stocks to Invest in and also lets People reading the Tweets get an idea of the sort of Approach a particular Tweeter follows. I always say that I can get a very good insight on whether or not a particular person makes Money simply by looking at the Stocks they Tweet about. This really is one of the many benefits I find from being extremely fortunate to be able to interact with so many helpful and collaborative Investors / Traders and it has enabled me to meet a whole new bunch of top quality Mates - and this has without doubt boosted my own never-ending Learning Process.

However, as with anything it’s pretty obvious that we might not get the full picture at all times - there are Stocks which are bought but never get Tweeted about; there are sells that suddenly appear with a huge Profit but we never saw a buy for the Stock; and of course there are Sells that don’t get mentioned although the Buy was flagged up - these are perhaps Losing Trades. Of course there are probably other variations on this.

For myself I try to provide 100% transparency on my Trades and Holdings and unless I have made a rare mistake I think I have fulfilled that intention since starting the WD silliness 4 years ago. The advantage (or perhaps disadvantage !!) of having my Website is that it is all down there and I can’t really escape from any of it. In fact, in many ways it helps me a lot for my own reference and I often find it quicker to check something about my own Portfolio by looking at the Website !!

Now of course some of the Twitter Accounts are actually devious and are Ramping and De-ramping on particular Stocks although this tends to be more on the AIM Junk stuff (see the ‘WheelieBin page‘). The Ramping is most prevalent where particular Individuals (sometimes acting in cahoots with other devious types) talk incessantly about a particular Stock and claim to be buying more and generally ‘Ramping it up’; whereas in reality their shameless promotion creates Buyers among more naïve and newer Punters who provide the Liquidity which the Rampers sell into. Of course they do not disclose these Sells (although they will perhaps claim a sell near the top and say how they made 250% in 2 weeks or something so that the unwary Punters get the impression these guys are highly skilled and they themselves lost money because of their lack of experience or poor timing - the truth is they were exploited.)

But I don’t really want to spend time on these devious types because there is another type of Person on Twitter who isn’t devious or dishonest but for various reasons they don’t fully disclose their Trades so you can get a skewed overall impression about how they are doing with their Portfolio. 

It has been obvious to me for ages that many People were not showing their Losses but it is not always clear-cut - there are in fact a few (but this is a very small number) extremely high skilled Investors with very high Win Rates. It has been brought home to me by discussions I have had with a few People outside of the Twitter World and they freely admit to me that they don’t mention all of their Trades and the common factor is that these are Losing Trades and they are nervous about admitting to them and they find it embarrassing. In fact, when you think about the Win Rates on some Twitter Accounts it is pretty obvious they are not showing all Trades - it is simply impossible to avoid a fair percentage of ‘Bad’ Trades,

Another thing I noticed was that certain People seemed to Win so much through the Days and Weeks but when they announced a Yearly Performance figure it didn’t really match up to the perception I got of their Trades. But of course we mustn’t ignore the inherent weaknesses in the Psychological perception of my own WheelieBrain and of course my perception could easily be skewed simply because I only looked at their Tweets at certain times of a Day etc. 

So the point of all my waffling here is to suggest to Readers that there is no harm in Tweeting out your Trades but there are a few advantages to you of pursuing 100% disclosure:

• It helps Discipline a lot - it means there is no hiding from your Losers and this forces you to face up to the Outcome and it might be worth taking time to think about what went ‘wrong’ and what you could have done better on the particular Trade or even as a general thing for how you manage all your trades. It might be helpful to Tweet out your Conclusions as to what you could do ‘better’ in future. Something I recommend is to do your own simple Blog/Website where you can record all this stuff and other Peeps can then learn from your thoughts.
• Easy Reference - If you create a Blog (it is dead easy and for example you can do it for Free with Weebly and others) you can use for your own reference - in effect it becomes your Diary but opening to the World enforces Discipline. Just before typing this tonight I was filling out my Trading Spreadsheet and I realised I had missed an entry - so I looked at my own Website to find the details as it was the quickest way !! An advantage I find is that my Trade Spreadsheets sit on my Laptop but I tend to only turn this on at night - so I can access Trade Details via my Website using Fone or Tablet at any time and while in the Pub !!
• You will raise your credibility with other People on Twitter. There is nothing to be embarrassed about and often if a Trade goes wrong and you flag it up then you get some excellent suggestions from other People regarding how to trade it better. I have even had Phone Chats with People about how to improve my Trades and that is hugely helpful.
• ‘Even Keel’ - After a while of full transparency you actually gain confidence and it makes you view every Trade, Win or Lose or Draw, the same. That’s how it should be - when you are nervous to Tweet out a Losing Trade it is an Emotional thing and this is not the ideal state of mind. You should aim to suppress Emotions all ways - no jumping for joy on a Winning Trade and no suicidal thoughts on a Losing Trade. No Emotion - just Spock-like Robotic, Rational, Assessment of every Trade. Calm state of mind and an Even Keel whatever the Markets chuck your way. A Trade is a Trade is a Trade - Win or Lose. This is all about the Psychology of Investing/Trading - get your Head right and you will succeed.

So from now on maybe I wont be the only Losing Investor on Twitter !!  (It’s very lonely you know…..)

Cheers WD.