So far,  my losses have outweighed my profits ( realized an unrealized ).  One thing I try to do that helps me out a lot mentally is to put my losses into context.   For example,  lets say I lose $1000.00 this year.  Rather than be down on myself about it,  I look at the lessons and experiences I learned over the course of the year and tell myself it would have cost me the same amount of money to sign up for a basic investing class that may have taught those same lessons and experiences in theory but not in practice.

My main investment goal is this:  By 55 I would like to have my mortgage paid off and have a nest-egg large enough where a 5-7% gain year over year comes close to matching my current income adjusted for inflation.   There are other tools I'm using in my quest to reach this goal ( mainly my companies 401k and a Roth IRA with another financial firm )

people new to investing, such as myself, in a market like this one do not have much of a history of gains to buffer any losses at all so the overall picture will most likely be heavy in the *red* colors.  I have 10 different securities all aquired within the last 6 months and there has not been enough time to witness any substantial gains that may have help offset recent drops. The net affect being that only 3 of my positions are showing profit. The other 7 have been positive, but due to the overall bear market pysche seemingly adversely affecting a lot of otherwise healthy stocks I show an overall loss in the portfolio. On my total investment of $25,000, I have been been from $1,500 up to $3,200 down in the last 2 months. The biggest issues for me are retailers showing heavy losses, an IPO settling to whatever, gold trying to continue a bull run, and commodities having reached a plateau of sorts recently. Of course there is a healthy dose of poor management, profit taking by big players, and the Feds refusing to show diligence on the Sirius/XM merger.

Hi all. I am new to this group, and new to TK. I have another online account that I participate in, but have come here for low cost trades. I am a very long time drip invester.

I would like to offer a different view of profit or loss.

This is a difficult year for investing, and many securities that you invest in will go down in value after you purchase them, others hopefully will go up. Some pay dividens, but you never have either a profit or a loss until you cash out.

For the year I think I am up in stocks (cashed out), holding some that I hope I bought cheap and will increase in value.

I am down in my IRA's (mutual funds), but still putting money in for the future.

Always trying to learn, and searching for winning investments.