At the end of the summer, I started back to work.  I’m a teacher.  I also started taking classes toward another degree.  Anyway, I had most of my funds in QQQQ because I thought trading a nice ETF and selling a few covered calls would insulate me from drastic swings that happen more commonly with individual stocks.  I thought I could be a little lax and not watch the market every single day.  Obviously, I was wrong.  I kept my focus on school and work and rode the QQQQ down.  Yea, that sucker went down in flames, and I lost money.  I never thought that it would go as low as it did, and my choice was either “wait for it to go back up,” which could take a lot of time, or get more serious about swing trading or picking longer term investments. 

So, I chose to re-dedicate some time to trading and watching the market a lot more closely.  Since then, I have made back a large chunk of my losses.  I’ve gone from being 25% up on the year, to being 60% down on the year, to being 20% down.  By Christmas, I hope to be back in the green.  From my lowest point, about two weeks ago, I've had about an 80% gain in my portfolio.  (I don't want to talk too confidently though, sometimes you have good weeks, and then you have bad weeks.)

Lesson learned:  If you’re going to swing trade or day trade and you can’t watch the market closely, the best place to be is out of the market.  Don’t ever think you can start neglecting the market and come out on top. 

--Thanks to EnglishTeach for the tip on SOL, which I've been trading for two weeks now.