yeah…it is here. He was down in 2008 bigly, then flat in 2010, and down again in 2011. Despite a big 2009, he wasn’t back to even until 2012 or later.
I lived through the Internet bubble of 1999–2000. I sold out of Amazon, Yahoo, and AOL one day in January or February of 2000, after Yahoo, as I remember, had gone up something like $30 to $50 per day for three days in a row. I said to my wife, “They may keep going up, but this is insane. I’ll let someone else have the rest of the ride.” The bubble broke about 3 weeks later. Sometimes selling can be the most important thing you can do. I didn’t get out of the market. I just bought non-internet stocks and was up 19% for the year. Sure I could have held through the decline, and 10 years later Amazon came back, even if Yahoo and AOL never did, but why???
I got killed in 2008 like everyone else. Probably worse than someone who was in defensive stocks. It was my first negative year after 19 positive years in a row. I stayed 100% in stocks, selling anything which hadn’t gone down much to buy more of the ones that were down the most.
Finally, I was down so much that even I got scared and started to think of selling out and going into cash. All the talking heads were saying, “Sell! Sell! Sell! Get out! Get 100% in cash!”
I said to my wife, “If everyone is shouting ‘Sell!’ and even I am scared enough to be thinking about selling, there’s no one else left to sell… This must be the bottom.” And it was (Nov 2008).
In 2008, in the big meltdown, I dropped 62.5%, which was pretty terrifying. In 2009 I was up 110.7%. The way percentages work though, after dropping 62.5%, gaining even 110.7% doesn’t get you back to where you started, but I sure felt better.
My Annual Results since 1993:
You’ll note that 32% a year compounded doesn’t mean you make roughly 32% every year. Below you’ll find a list of the gains of my entire portfolio starting in 1993. Numbers are percent gain. In other words 21.4% means every $100 turned into $121.40, and 115.5% means every $100 turned into $215.50.
Two enormous years in 1999 (Internet Bubble) and 2003, when my portfolio was still fairly small, sure helped out.
**1993: 21.4%**
**1994: 15.4%**
**1995: 43.4%**
**1996: 29.4%**
**1997: 17.4%**
**1998: 4.9%**
**1999: 115.5%**
**2000: 19.4%**
**2001: 46.9%**
**2002: 19.7%**
**2003: 124.5%**
**2004: 16.7%**
**2005: 15.6%**
**2006: 8.6%**
**2007: 22.5%**
**2008: –62.5%**
**2009: 110.7%**
**2010: 0.3%**