At the end of the calendar year, we have a little tradition when it comes to the stock market. Sell everything, and go completely into cash as the calendar switches from December 31 and starts again with January 1st. This year was no exception.

The reason behind my annual sell-off isn't the result of some chart-reading that tells me the market usually takes early January off (though sometimes it does). It also isn't because I have an innate need for a challenge, and see the move as starting the new year from scratch. Instead, it's simply that I do my own taxes every year, and don't want the hassle of tracking down individual trades that bridge a calendar year.

By making sure all my stock trades both begin and end in the same year, Intuit's TurboTax service can easily tabulate the gains and losses for each trade, and doesn't force me to dig through my eTrade records to see when a particular stock was purchased. Also, as I often buy and sell a single stock symbol multiple times in a year, I'm not left scratching my head and guessing where I should appropriately report I paid commissions. After all, if I have confusion, it's likely someone in the IRS will have confusion too, and might later ask me to clarify... leading to pain.

Clearing out my stock drawer (so to speak) also helps clarify what went well and what didn't over the year. There's no ambiguity as to whether one trade hasn't panned out yet or not.

So how'd we do?

Index	Q1	Q2	Q3	Q4
Me	+2%	+4%	+8%	+35%
NASDAQ	+<1%	+8%	+4%	-2%

That looks pretty good on its face. We were up more than 50% on the year. But if I dig deeper, it's clear I could have done significantly better if I completely ditched my quick trade strategy and had instead put all my money into Apple and slept on it.

Index	Q1	Q2	Q3	Q4
Me	+2%	+4%	+8%	+35%
AAPL	+8%	+31%	+26%	+29%

Being such an Apple guy, you'd think I'd have done the right thing, the smart thing, and given all I had to Cupertino. But I didn't. And while others have no doubt made out like bandits, I've ended up looking pretty silly, as the Mac and iPod maker more than doubled its market cap on the year.

I think a lot of people are looking pretty silly when it comes to AAPL. Even the most aggressive, pro-Mac guys, like me, couldn't have anticipated the kind of success Steve Jobs and team have delivered. But now, with Macworld approaching, and having cash on hand, maybe, just maybe, I'll do my part, and get back in the game. If I do, I promise I'll let you know.

Also See:

2005 Taxes in the Bag
The Stock Market Is Bleeding Us Dry
I Bet Wrong On AAPL, Again
Apple Stock Pays for AppleTV, New Airport Extreme
Taxes Completed Online, As Always
Top Eight Worst Stock Moves I Ever Made
Two Hours Of Apple Stock Plenty Profitable

December 2007 In Summary (Archive Page)

Total stories published to date: 1,129

Total stories published in December: 55
(About 1.8 per day, up from 1.1 in November)

Total stories in December with comments: 27
(49% of all stories, up from 16 and 47% in November)

Total comments on December posts: 85
(About 1.5 per post, 3 per commented post)

Technorati Authority Ranking: 126 (up 23)
Feedburner Peak in Month: 206 subscribers (up 25)
Feedblitz E-mail Subscribers: 15 subscribers (up 1)
MyBlogLog Members: 39 (up 4)

Monthly Traffic Rank in Last 12: 1st overall, and a new record!

Blog Value Estimator: $71,132.04


December hit new highs, pushed by an end-of-month spike.
Top Five Most Visited December Stories (According to Analog)

1. I Have Seen the Future of Social RSS Feed Readers
2. Feedheads Approaching 10,000 Active Facebook Users
3. Google Reader Blinks, and the Mob Wins
4. The Web Advertising Bubble Has Got to Pop
5. AideRSS Judges Feed Posts as Good, Great, Best

Others receiving votes: What I'm Reading and Sharing on Google Reader, Doubling Down On Our TiVo Obsession, 10 Predictions for 2008 In the World of Tech, and Buy Your Favorite Bloggers a Gift this Holiday...

Top Five Visited Archive Stories (According to Analog)

1. Soft-Core Porn, Sex Themes Power Google Video
2. Eight Reasons the Apple TV is Failing, and How It Can be Saved
3. Internal Linking On Some Tech Blogs Is Out of Control
4. eBay Locks Me Out for My Own Good
5. 10 Suggestions to Improve Google Reader

After November's ho-hum showing, December was a record-breaker of sorts for us, returning to the momentum we've been building up all year. Not only did we have the strongest numbers of total visitors and page views on record in December, but we had a high amount of interactivity, from good comments, to a good amount of posts being sent to StumbleUpon, or added to Del.icio.us. We've been relatively Digg-free since April, but won't be holding our breath to see that change. Also, the last five days were all extremely strong traffic-wise, with Monday being in the top five days for total traffic all-time. Not bad. Of course, with this under our belt, we're starting 2008 at zero again, and look forward to setting and achieving new goals.

To keep on top of things, subscribe via RSS, via e-mail, follow me on Friendfeed, or keep watch on our shared link blog!

Five years ago tonight, as the clock passed midnight from December 31, 2002 to January 1, 2003, I proposed, and my then-girlfriend, now wife, said yes. While that story's unlikely to win any headlines, I have to acknowledge the Mac's role our courtship - a story which just might make you "Think Different".

In the fall of 2002, an acquaintance of mine from church asked if I could help her move from Foster City to Sunnyvale. Being the geek I was, I took out my Handspring Visor, and added an appointment in the calendar for Saturday to move boxes and carry furniture.

While we got along fine, we hadn't yet found a spark. And that could have been the end of it. But it wasn't.

Kristine knew I was a Mac geek, and a few weeks later, she called to see if I would help her go to the Apple Store and pick up a new Mac before the school year started. Of course, I said I would. I had made the trip to the Palo Alto Apple Store a few times before, with other girls, so this wasn't anything big. Or so I thought.

We picked up a new 12-inch iBook, and I did my part to talk the Apple sales rep out of forcing us into AppleCare, saving $299. I promised I would help where needed.

The next week, we set a follow-on "date" where I would set up her Mac, show her the ropes, and make sure she had all the necessary applications to kick the school year off right. As many of her fellow teachers were forced to use Dells, she needed some kind of support, and she had someone.

That date just so happened to also include dinner and a movie. And future dates didn't have much to do with the Mac after a while. Eventually, I was bringing my Mac over to her condo after work, and I was pushing to get an Airport high-speed wireless network. She did, and I was hooked.

Now, five years later, we've been married for four-plus years. She's since replaced her iBook twice. Once, because it was dropped at school, and more recently, because of an upgrade to an Intel-based MacBook. My PowerBook was upgraded once, and this year, I got a MacBook Pro myself. Our home is littered with iPods of various sizes, not to mention an Apple TV.

Clearly, Macs were part of us getting together, and have been part of our life together. While the ingredients to a successful relationship aren't always easy to nail down, there's no question ours could have been much different without Apple. Thank goodness, we don't have to find out what that would have been like.

I covered most of my near year-end statistical data on Christmas Day, when I said a lot of my visitors in 2007 were not only coming from Google, but looking for information on Google. But there are still a few pebbles left to be uncovered. As I quickly looked at the year's statistics - through 5 p.m. today, a unique referral caught my eye.

Almost 1 percent of my visitors in 2007 came from Robert Scoble's link blog. In aggregate, after each of the Google properties, MySpace, BlogLines, and Feedburner, Scoble's link blog sent about 5,000 visitors in 2007, in little dribs and drabs, usually about one to two dozen visitors per item he chose to share in Google Reader. In all, there were 51 posts I made in 2007 that he shared, which delivered 10 or more unique visitors.


While the URL strings from Google Reader aren't pretty, they still work, as you can see in the quick screen grab above from my report from Analog.

It's always interesting to me to learn how we first find out about people, and find their blogs.

The way I first found Robert's blog? The infamous "Brrreeeport" experiment from early 2006.

As this blog was getting off the ground, I was peeking at Technorati, and this nonsensical word caught my eye as a common search term. After finding Robert's blog, it was off to the races for me. Clicking off to GigaOM and TechCrunch and eventually on to folks my own level was a serious rush, and I was dumbfounded I hadn't found it before. Somehow, I'd been so siloed as to not have the light bulb go on until early 2006.

You can see my first mentioning of this here in March 2006: Top Ten Sites for NextGen Tech Info

Others have told me they found my blog either through one of Scoble's posts, or from the link blog. I know it works. While I doubt I have the power to deliver people 1% of their yearly traffic from my link blog, that's one major reason I keep mine going. I want new people to learn what I'm reading, and find new sources for information. I read Scoble's Link Blog, and often open the links in a new window, and eventually find myself subscribing to their RSS feed in Google Reader. That's one of the major tenets of the new Web - sharing, following, and discovering.

So Robert, thanks for the 1%. And if you were one of the 1%, thanks for visiting. I hope you'll stay.

To subscribe to my link blog, start here.