The first month

I opened my investment account through Etrade towards the end of September. So it's been over a month and the results are not spectacular however they are pretty standard considering the volatility of the market recently. 

Overall my portfolio is down 18.20% at the markets close this Friday. I am not going to go into great detail at the moment about what I have in my portfolio just yet. But I will say for the most part I have been buying stocks I am comfortable with holding on to for a while and using money that I do not anticipate any need for. There are a few purchases I slightly regret where I treated a stock like a race horse and have been burned accordingly. But overall for a rookie I feel like I have done a pretty good job.

As far as the loss goes... Being down 18.20% at the moment is not really not that bad. I bought stocks when they were already undervalued in the midsts of the first wave of sell offs. I probably like a lot of people had thought we had reached bottom. Surprise! I was wrong. Imagine someone who has been in the market for a while, potentially buying stocks near their 52 weeks highs, ouch that has to hurt.