This weekend I finally have the time to organize my investments. I havn’t keep an eye on it for a few months and I didn’t even keep a good track of record of my profits and losses. I spent a whole afternoon entering all my transaction records into my yahoo profile and determine which stock I should hold and what new stocks I should get. I find my performance is just ok, on average I have about 8% of return per year. I had made some good stock picks and a few bad picks. The best peformer is Advanced Medical Optics (EYE), I got it when it first IPO at $9, after 3 years I sold it at $36 making a 400% profit. I could have hold it longer since it went up to $47 now. Oh well, I should not be too greedy. I found that picking what stock to buy is the easier part in investing, deciding when to sell much more important. Almost every stock I owned had went up at a certain time after I bought it. The key is selling it while having a profit. I have held on some stocks for too long and its value drop so much I had to take a loss. I don’t buy stock for short term gain, my goal for each stock I pick having a 50% return in 2-3 years. I don’t look at market news or charts trying to speculate the price change. It is too hard to read accurately and you can never beat the pro-traders. My approach is reading the big picture on market trends, then invest in the top companies in the industry with growth potential. My primary source of information is the Economist. I have keep track of stocks picks from the Economist, so far the record is quote impressive. Most of them goes up with a half year lag after the article is published. Too bad that I don’t have the principle or the guts to invest in all of my own stock picks. Here are some of my stock pick at the moment: RSA Security (RSAS), TVIA Inc (TVIA), Avaya (AV), Titanium Metals Corp (TIE), Monsanto (MON), Apache Corp (APA)