We’re at that point in the year when we can sit back and take stock of where we’ve been, what we’ve done, and how it’s all worked out. I was reading through a bunch of the posts I’ve made over the last couple of years, when one stuck out like a sore thumb. If there was ever a post to make me smack my head against the wall, this was it. Remember the Google IPO, back in the summer of ‘04?

I went through my online stock trading phase. It’s not so much that I burned out on it … it’s that I burned through my brokerage account with a bunch of bad choices. Left with no chips to bring to the table, I paid less and less attention to the high-tech stock hijinks.

Which brought me on August 4th, 2004, to write:

A few high flying IPOs might bring some optimism into a fairly gloomy world. Folks might get revved up again and start throwing money at companies left and right, as they log onto their brokerage accounts twenty times a day (or more) to watch the craziness.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t ready to drop $100 a share on GOOG… and two years later, my head is smacking the wall.

Check out this stock chart. (Heh, yeah … that’s a Yahoo link … take a look at how the two stocks compare over the past two years.)

2006 is the year I get back into the market, albeit in a very small way. But I’ve learned my lesson. I don’t have the stomach (or the brains) to buy individual stocks any more. Instead, I’m looking for one or two well managed mutual funds with a tech slant, sharp eyes, and a steady hand on the wheel…