Well here we go. It's been a very up and down year. At one point I was actually up 39% on my initial investment. I finished the financial year up 16% on where I was twelve months ago. I have to be pretty happy with that given that it's twice as much as what I would have received if I had left the same amount of money sitting in the bank. I have to be even happier given that in the same time the Australian Stock market has declined by almost 17% and has seen it's worse single year decline since 1982! To make a 16% return out of a market that made an overall loss of 17% is OK I think. The worse part is that I have lost "heaps" over the past month. Six out the past eight weeks have seen losses for me totaling almost $3000. To date I haven't mentioned figures, but I don't see any reason why I should continue to keep them secret. None of the figures I will quote are exact, but they are near enough! I started with $25000 and so far I have turned that into $31000. If I had left it in the bank it would be worth about $27000, so that's an extra $4000 in my pocket (so to speak). I'm not taking any of the money out, I'm re investing it back into the market so at the moment I have about $30000 in shares and about $1000 in cash. I also hold quite a few Telstra shares that I received years ago, but I'm not including them as they are a long term investment as opposed to the short term trading I'm talking about here. Below is my updated graph showing my portfolio's performance since I started in April 2007. It also shows the equivalent cash rate and the Australian All Ordinaries. I have also added a little graph to the top left hand side of the front page. This graph will update automagically every Friday evening with the current value of my portfolio (cash and shares), so come back every now and then to check on my progress.

The walk into town from the Regatta Grounds this morning was awesome. One of the best. I don't really know what made it so good. Maybe it was the fact that it was only 3 degrees, the mountain was covered in snow, I had a really enjoyable game of tennis last night (I lost two of my three matches, but really enjoyed all three games), Dave Noonan was doing a really funny crazy call on SeaFM, there was no wind and not a cloud  in the sky. The sun was out and it was just beautiful. You just can't beat Hobart in winter (on a good day!).

I know I promised a share update, but I haven't done my books yet so it will have to wait until the weekend. Unfortunately the news has not been all good. The market has gone a bit mental of late, but more of that later. 

Well that was interesting. I walked over to the Hobart Regatta Grounds to collect my car last night and found it in the river. Heaps of people park over there because it's free, the view is awesome and it's a great walk in across the Domain to town. Unfortunately I didn't factor in the free car wash. Yesterday an extreme low pressure system combined with a very high tide and high winds resulted in some very wet cars. I found mine with water lapping around the wheels but as the photo below shows some were much worse off than me! Read the full story here.