Year End Summary – 2021

I had a good year financially considering the distractions I had. We all had to deal with COVID, even if we didn’t catch it ourselves. I also had my ex-wife with Alzheimer’s living with me until a few weeks ago, had my fourth back surgery, my dad had cancer (successful) surgery, and my son is a senior in high school. To deal with the stress of the year, I spent more time out running trails in various parks around metro Atlanta and less time focused on my own investment accounts after working on my clients’ accounts. While my health is in a good place now, I missed a lot of gains in the stock market by being more passive than I usually am.

My account ended December with a Net Asset Value (NAV) of $139,917.15 according to Interactive Brokers (IB) after beginning last with a balance of $125,000. I had a gain of $14,917.15 (~11.93%) on paper for 2021 (below the Dow’s 18.73% gain and the S&P’s 26.89% gain). My TLT position held me back. I had a realized gain of $2,124.52, but carried a paper loss of $522.71 into this year. I also paid $389.07 in short dividend and interest costs. The main issue with that position is that I held back too much cash to cover it when I could’ve been invested in equities more.

So, another year and another set of lessons learned. I was smart to limit my realized gains to only $3,445.83, but would’ve had more money post-tax if I had traded more while the economy continued to rebuild. To help push me to trade more in 2022, I just deposited $10,082.85 to bring my beginning balance for 2022 up to $150,000. This increase in value gives me more room to diversify. I’d love it if some of my favorite ETFs, like SPY, MDY, and IWM would split so I could still use options and have it take up a smaller percentage of my account.

As my son gets ready to go off to college, I’m planning to sell my house this summer and have a long vacation planned to go back to Greece. I’m going to continue adding miles on my running shoes and at the same time I plan to put more energy into my investing. I don’t expect 2022 to be as good for the broader market as it was in 2021, but I think I can earn $15,000 (10%) if I put more time into my own account. I thought we’d get at least a 10% correction last year and wanted to be ready to jump in deep when it hit, but it didn’t. I need to up my risk tolerance and can always add on margin if we get a good sell-off while I’m short on cash. I’ll feel better about that approach when I know where my son is going to college and how much it’ll cost me.