My portfolio of individual stocks I started investing in last year is finally showing a profit. Not much of one but compared to the 30% loss in my Roth IRA it looks pretty good. This doesn’t matter much since I won’t be using the money for several years but it is good to see it heading in the right direction. I wish I could say that the superior return of my stock portfolio compared to my Roth IRA was due to my investing skill but it is mostly attributable to luck. I didn’t start investing in my individual stocks until late October/early November after the stock market had already declined steeply. This wasn’t because I was timing the market but because I didn’t have the money to invest before then. Sometimes it is better to be lucky than good.