That was the wording that accompanied my first column in the Sunday Tribune last September.

It's been over six months so I thought it time to review my progress.

Positives? Being disciplined.

Sticking to the plan. Honouring my stop loss orders. A return of just over 50%. Not bad. On a negative note, I'm up just over 50%. Not enough.

Confused? The truth is my return has been much better than that offered by simply buying and holding the major averages, but not as good as I was hoping for. If I keep compounding my pro"ts at the current rate, my account will be around the 55,000 mark at the end of the 12-month period. At the moment, the 100,000 target looks a distant one.

Was my initial goal too ambitious? Yes and no. Instinctively, it feels unachievable, especially for a trader not prepared to take wild risks. It's not as lofty as it seems, however. A return of 12% a month, compounded, will result in a quadruple within a year. That's difficult but far from impossible.

Would I be satisfied with a lesser return? Sure. What's disappointing is that my account has stagnated over the past six weeks or so. Up until then, I'd been making good progress. November was a spectacular month, as was January.

Profits for those two months were in the region of 10,000. I've achieved double-digit returns in three of the six months I've been trading.

Returns in the other months were more lacklustre, but all yielded small profits. By the end of January, my account was just shy of 40,000, a return of nearly 60% in less than five months. If I kept that up, I'd be looking at hitting the 100,000 mark by the end of 2007.

Unfortunately, I haven't kept that up. February was flat and and March is not turning out any better.

My account is actually lower than it was at the end of January.

I'm finding it hard to pinpoint why.

The markets have been difficult in stages, but not to any notable degree. Indeed, the swings of the past month have swelled the accounts of many traders I know.

Another possibility is money. As my account grows, so does my bet size. When my account was 25,000, I was willing to lose no more than 500 on any trade.

These days, it ranges between 700-800 per trade. Five losses in a week could result in losses of 4,000 or so. I'm also conscious that four or five wins could see profits of an even greater magnitude. Could the thought of all this lolly be affecting my trading?

I don't think so. I've been looking at my trades over the past few months and don't see any major changes. My trading follows a basic pattern: after entering, I put in a stop loss order. If the position goes in my direction, I look to book some profits at a given point and raise my stop loss order on the remainder of the position to the break-even point. As time passes, I continue raising my stop in order to lock in the remaining profits.

In a nutshell, it's a system designed to protect my profits without cutting them short prematurely. My recent trading has followed the basic pattern. Sure, I've made some mistakes, as regular readers will know, but no more so than in earlier, more successful months. I did miss some glorious opportunities in February, but I'm sure I missed some beauties in other months also.

I can come up with two reasons for the recent downturn . . . Apple and Elan. For months, these two traded like a dream. In particular, trading Elan was child's play, with the stock behaving exactly as I expected on almost every occasion. Anyone with a basic awareness of technical trading patterns should have been making good money out of this stock. Since September, Elan has afforded me several trades every month. Practically all of them were winners. My last Elan trade was a loser, however, and I haven't made a cent from the stock in March (incidentally, I shorted Elan last week, although the position hasn't gone anywhere so far).

Apple has been a similar story.

For months, I felt I was able to read the stock successfully. That has changed over the past few months and the stock has provided me with numerous losing trades, the most recent of which came last week (I was stopped out of my short).

Of course, my trading is not dependent on the movements of just two stocks. I'll trade anything that moves. One of the reasons I spread bet is because of the wide variety of trading vehicles . . . stocks, commodities, currencies . . . on offer.

It's a good idea to follow a few stocks closely, however.

I'm not planning any changes of note. The past two months have been disappointing, not dismal. It's not as if I've been losing money hand over fist. More to the point, I believe in my methods. If I keep doing what I have been doing, I'll make money. It may take longer than I'd hoped for, but I'll get there.

I think.

Regarding my positions, I was stopped out of my short positions in Apple, SanDisk and the Nasdaq 100. Currently long crude oil and Research in Motion, both of which have provided some relief. Shorted Elan.

Weekly gain/loss: . . . 600

Overall balance: 38,050