The Return: Where I’ve Been
It’s been 14 months since my last post in August 2024. If you’re reading this—whether you’re a returning reader or discovering this blog for the first time (welcome to my friends from Singapore and around the world!)—you might be wondering where I’ve been and what happened to the journey I committed to sharing publicly.
The honest answer: I was silent. And it wasn’t because I was confidently building something—it was because I was stuck.
I was trying to figure things out, feeling a bit down, unsure where to even start. How do I properly assess a company? What if I buy a stock in a company that looks solid today, but goes downhill or even bankrupt tomorrow? And even if the company is in great shape—how do I know when to buy? Is the price good right now, or should I wait?
These questions kept circling in my head. I needed answers. More importantly, I needed a systematic way to find those answers consistently.
So I spent months figuring it out. And then, finally, I started building.
When I started this blog, I made a commitment to share my trading journey with complete transparency—the wins, the losses, the small decisions that compound over time. That commitment hasn’t changed. But over the past 14 months, I realized something critical: before I could continue making trades and sharing my progress, I needed to finalize something fundamental. I needed a complete, documented trading strategy.
Not a perfect strategy. Not a guaranteed-to-work strategy. But a detailed, systematic approach that I could follow consistently, test rigorously, and improve methodically over time.
This post is just to give you an overall view of what I’ve been doing and, most importantly, that I’ve entered multiple trades with real outcomes to share.
I’m keeping some details general for now—like exact dates and amounts—because I’ll be adding all that precise information as I build out Portfolio Lab in the coming weeks. Consider this the high-level update, with the full transparency coming soon.
Building the Foundation: My Trading Strategy
Look, I wanted to make trades. But I didn’t want to lose everything.
I needed to test my approach with real money—that’s the only way to know if something actually works. But the fear was real: What if I lose it all? What if I make stupid decisions and blow through my capital?
So I spent the past 14 months building something that could protect me while I learned. Not a perfect system, but a framework that would help me make the best decisions possible and minimize losses when I’m wrong.
In my earlier attempts, I was flying blind. I’d research a stock, convince myself it was great, buy it, and then panic when it dropped. Should I sell? Should I hold? I had no idea. No rules. Just fear and hope battling it out.
That had to change.
So I documented everything into a strategy that covers how I screen stocks, how I score opportunities, when to enter, when to exit, position sizing, risk management—all of it. The goal? Make better decisions and protect my capital while I figure this out.
I’ve finalized this strategy in a comprehensive PDF document, and I’ve made it available for free. If you want to see the full details of my approach, you can download it by signing up on my portfolio tracker landing page. No catch, no upsell—just the complete strategy I’m using.
But that’s not all—stay tuned for an upcoming series of posts right here in Chapter 1 where I’ll be breaking down each component of my trading strategy in detail. Consider the PDF your complete reference guide, and the blog posts your deep-dive exploration of how each piece works in practice.
But here’s the critical decision I made: Before I make any future trades, I will only follow this documented strategy. Not because I think it’s perfect or proven, but because consistency is the only way to learn what works and what doesn’t. Every trade becomes a data point. Every outcome teaches me about the system. And most importantly, I can systematically improve the strategy based on real results.
This is what separates random trading from systematic trading. And it’s the foundation everything else builds on.
Putting Money Where My Mouth Is: Real Trades, Real Results
A strategy is just theory until you put real money behind it. So once I had my system documented, I started testing it with actual trades. Here’s what happened:
Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) - The Win ✅
JNJ scored high on my first pillar, so I bought it. It played out exactly how I anticipated—made $1,600. This is what I was hoping for. Strategy worked.
Pfizer (PFE) - The Waiting Game
PFE also had a really high score, so I went in. But then… nothing. Six months of watching it sit there, actually losing money for a while. When it finally got back to break-even, I sold. High score doesn’t mean fast results, apparently.
Target (TGT) - Lost Trust
TGT scored well, so I bought it. But then it started losing money and tariffs were hitting it. I didn’t trust it anymore, so I sold at break-even. Got out before it got worse.
Roche Holding (RHHBY) - Still Watching
Still holding RHHBY. We’ll see what happens.
What I Learned:
The biggest lesson? Having a strategy gives you confidence and a roadmap to follow. It makes decisions easier. And when your strategy doesn’t work—and it won’t always—you can go back, analyze what went wrong, tweak it, and improve it.
Here’s the profound difference: When you don’t have a strategy and you lose money, it’s devastating. You don’t know what went wrong. You can’t fix anything because there was no system to begin with. But when you have a strategy and you lose money? It’s actually motivating. You have something concrete to examine, improve, and test again.
The second lesson goes beyond trading—it’s about making the strategy itself something I’m proud of. My focus used to be simple: make a trade, win, make money right now. But now? I still want to win, but I’m not obsessing over individual trades. I’m fundamentally obsessed with building a good strategy. The pride comes from accomplishing something useful, not just from the money.
And I’m putting my money where my mouth is. I started small—about $5,000 in early 2024. This year, in 2025, I’ve invested $30,000 to $40,000 into this strategy. I’m not joking around about testing this system with real money.
Will I break even by the end of this year? Maybe not. But the confidence I’ve gained is tremendous, and that all goes back to having a systematic strategy. That confidence is why I invested so much more—from $5k to over $30k. I saw the benefit of the system.
And that’s exactly why I decided to stop making new trades, finalize the PDF and strategy completely, and add all the details before moving forward. Real-money trading forces you to confront every assumption in your system. I needed to document everything I’ve learned so far before continuing. It’s more fun to trade when you actually know what you’re doing.
Introducing Portfolio Lab: Transparency in Action
Now for the big announcement: I’m transforming the finance section of this blog into something much more powerful. Welcome to Portfolio Lab.
Portfolio Lab is where theory meets reality. It’s where I’ll publicly track everything—my actual portfolio, my research into AI stock picking tools, and my forward testing experiments. This is complete transparency in action, and it serves multiple purposes:
- Accountability: When your trades are public, you can’t cherry-pick wins or hide losses
- Learning: Sharing my process helps me learn, and hopefully helps you too
- Validation: I’m testing concepts that might become a portfolio tracking app in the future—but I want to validate them publicly first
Here’s what Portfolio Lab includes:
Tab 1: My Portfolio - Complete Transparency
This is where I share all my trades. Every stock I buy—the amount, the price, and why I bought it based on my strategy’s scoring system. You’ll see my gains and losses. If I sell, I’ll tell you why.
No hiding. Real money, real results.
Tab 2: AI Picks Evaluation - Testing the Tools
I’m researching AI stock picking tools to see if they can save me time. Can AI help me find good stocks faster? Are these picks actually profitable?
I won’t trust them blindly, but if they give me a solid starting point for my research, that’s valuable. I’ll track which AI picks work, which don’t, and whether they’re worth using.
Tab 3: Forward Testing - The “What If” Lab
I don’t have enough money to buy every stock I find. Let’s say I find four good stocks but only have capital for two. The other two? I’ll forward test them here.
This gives me more data to test my strategy without spending more money. Real testing of my approach, just without the risk.
The Bigger Vision:
Let me be clear about something: my primary goal isn’t to build an app. My goal is to become a successful, profitable trader. Portfolio Lab is first and foremost my journal—a way to document my journey publicly and hold myself accountable.
But here’s the thing: as I build these tools and features to track my own trading, I’m discovering what actually works and what doesn’t. If these tools prove genuinely useful for my trading journey, then maybe—just maybe—I’ll package them into an app that others can use too.
The app would be a byproduct of my trading success, not the goal itself. I’m building what I need first. If it helps you along the way, even better.
What’s Next: The Commitment
Here’s my commitment going forward: Any and all trades I make must go through my strategy.
My strategy has three pillars, and a stock must pass at least two out of three—maybe even all three depending on the situation. Why does this matter? Because consistency is everything. Without consistency, I can’t test the strategy properly. I can’t go back, tweak it, test it again, and iterate. That back-and-forth testing and refinement? That’s how I’ll know if my strategy actually works.
This strategy will keep evolving—it’s a living document. It needs to evolve with time as I learn more, as markets change, as I gather more data. And here’s my second commitment: As I improve the strategy, I’ll keep you posted with all the updates.
Portfolio Lab will be where all of this transparency lives. You’ll see:
- All my trades with complete details
- My findings on AI stock picks and how they’re performing in testing
- The evolution of my strategy over time
- My wins and my losses—no cherry-picking
Sharing this publicly is not a small feat. But it’s important. It keeps me honest. This is my journal—I may win or I may lose, but I’m not pretending like a lot of other content out there does.
Remember what I wrote in an earlier post? The devil is in the details. Well, this is the devil. All of it. Every trade, every decision, every outcome.
And if you’re on a similar journey—whether you’re in Singapore, the United States, or anywhere else in the world—you’re invited to learn alongside me.
Join Me
My apologies for the long absence, but it wasn’t in vain. I did a lot of research, and I now have a strategy I can not only share but actually exercise—and hopefully improve and evolve over time.
I’m excited about these changes because now I have motivation to work toward something, not just hoping I succeed in my trades. I’ve also developed a plan to stay more consistent and post more regularly. Building the strategy and figuring it all out took time, but now things are more planned.
I’ll try to be more consistent going forward. And soon, I may even provide a way to contact me if you have questions or suggestions.
I’m pretty excited. I hope you are too.
Want my complete trading strategy? Download the full PDF by signing up at the portfolio tracker page. It’s free—no catch, just the complete system I’m using.
New here? Start with Chapter 1 to understand why I’m sharing this journey publicly.