I escaped 2008 with a small loss in my account (-5%). Not bad, compared to how the indexes did (down 35-40%), but not great, given that I did trade some short positions (with puts) during the year. On December 24, IBD published a table listing the performance of the best growth mutual funds since April, 1994. The top fund was up +382% since 1994. My IRA account remains up a little more than 1200% (13x) since late 1994, so I do not feel that bad about my performance this year. The key to my success is that I made money during the strong market rises and kept it, by being mainly out of the market during the major declines. I might add that while I traded in my IRA during the huge declines in 2000-2002 and 2008, I avoided major losses in my university pension plan by transferring from mutual funds into a money market fund during these declines. So, I have learned the painful lesson over my 40+ years of trading that the key to success is conservation of capital during the inevitable market down-trends. These declines can be detected long before they reach the panic phase when they become evident to everyone. I have developed rules for identifying the market’s trend early, that I post each market day in this blog, in the form of the GMI and GMI-R…..