Happy New Year!
Welcome to the start of 2018. This is the start of the 3rd year for Main Street beats Wall Street. My trading and maintaining this site really takes a lot of time. My trading is well worth the time because I’m making a living doing what I love. Main Street beats Wall Street is also well worth the time because I love teaching. While I’m still constantly learning, I love helping new traders get started. Anyone getting started, I think it’s valuable to be able to watch someone make trades and read about the trades as they’re being made. See if I’m making money or losing money, REAL MONEY! I don’t think there is anyone else doing that! At least not for free! I don’t charge for subscriptions, answering questions via email or even on the phone. We now have 161 members in our family who receive my emails. I know it’s not a lot but I don’t advertise to get more readers. Whoever finds me is welcome to use, and hopefully, learn from Main Street beats Wall Street. Free!
2017 was a very nice year. I’ll be doing a year ending report very soon. I’ll be reporting how close I got to my “2017 Challenge.”
I’ll be sending out a number of post to start the new year. I hope I don’t bother you too much but things have to be reported. I’ve been and will continue to clean out some of my positions I’ve been holding from 2017. Last week I dumped 1000 shares of Arconic (ARNC) which I’ve had for a while. I also dumped 1000 shares of RH for a little year ending tax write-off, I still hold 1000 shares. I’ll decide what to do with RH as the opening week of 2018 gets older. RH is up $2 as I write. As mentioned, I’ll be writing my 2017 year ending report. And I’ll be posting about my 2018 goals. You will be reading about my gift account I started. This is an account I spun off of my trading account. This “Gift Account” will be used to store stock I’ll be gifting to younger family members.
If you look at the top menu bar under “My Positions,” in the drop-down box you will see I finalized my page “Trade History 2017” and added “Trade History 2018.” As you probably know, these history pages list all trades made for that year.
I’m starting 2018 on a good note. The readers who look at my “Active Trades/Current Positions” page from time to time know I’ve been holding 3000 shares of U.S. Steel since 3/20/17. I bought the shares when there was a lot of news about Trump’s infrastructure investment plans. I bought the shares at $36.40. While he was working on trying to set up the replacement for Obamacare and working on the tax cuts, among other policy changes, infrastructure spending took a back burner. It’s unbelievable how it happens but as soon as I bought the 3000 shares the stock started down. In mid April the stock took a huge drop on their earnings report, and by the 1st week of May the stock hit a low for the year, below $19. This is over $17 below where I bought in. On my 3000 shares, my account was suffering over $50,000. Because of the great year I was having my account was still up a nice amount. And I was drawing my monthly money according to my “2017 Challenge.” This was very scary but I was hanging in there! I guess my risk tolerance is higher than most.
Starting in mid May U.S. Steel started back up. Slowly buy surely the stock was moving up and down in an upward slant. Today, 7 months later, I just got out with a gain. It was a long ride of watching and hoping and today the stock went above my buy-in price of $36.40 for the 1st time. When it hit $36.40 I had my finger on the trigger to get out. Today, with everything moving pretty nicely, including U S Steel, I figured I came this far, let me watch a little longer before I jump out. I just got out at $36.80 with a 40¢ gain. This is so crazy! I watched this stock a long time and I was able to start 2018 with a $1200 gain in the first few hours of the year. The sad part is, as I write the stock continues up lol. That’s ok, this is part of cleaning house to start a new year.
3/20/17 – Buy 3000 Shares X @ $36.40
1/2/18 – Sell 3000 Shares X @ $36.80
Profit +$1200
This $1200 is in my 2018 mattress, and I’m off and running. Let’s hope this it the start of a great year.
Steve
The Options Coach
Thank you for allowing me to be part of this. You truly are a great teacher. I don’t have much in, but it has been fun getting a couple hundred added to my account each month.