At the beginning of last year, I began my job at an investment advisory service. Though I had never been very interested in investments before, dealing with them in my everyday life spurned my interest forward. I went out and bought books recommended by personal finance blogs, such as A Random Walk Down Wall Street and The Little Book of Common Sense Investing.

I was promptly poked fun of by my coworkers.

Not because I was a neophyte in the investing world, but because I was reading books by preachers of index funds. What was so bad about index funds, I wondered? It sounded as though market timing was a myth best practiced by practitioners of voodoo, individual stocks were for the insane or insanely rich, and choosing a successful mutual fund was a fool’s errand.

What I learned was that in the end, index funds are a viable choice, but by buying one, putting a blindfold on, and selling it when you retire, you are submitting yourself to be a toy of the stock market and its investors. So instead, I followed the advice of my colleagues and invested in growth stocks, using market timing to balance the cash I had in my portfolio against the performance and strength of the overall market.

At the end of the year, my portfolio was up 39.32%, which I was extremely happy with. Now I must admit that I credit a fair portion of this with beginner’s luck. Not to mention I was being guided by people with ten, twenty, thirty, and forty years of investing experience – both in terms of stock recommendations as well as market timing recommendations.

So what were my big winners and losses of 2007?

Winners

• Apple (AAPL): Up 132%. This was the very first stock I bought at the beginning of the year. I kept it for the entire year, recently selling it before Macworld as it seemed as though the enthusiasm for the stock was dwindling.
• China Fire & Security Group (CFSG): Up 32%. A tiny company that racked up tons of contracts for installing fire and security systems in Chinese infrastructure. This one was up nearly 80%, but dropped at the end of the year.
• Garmin (GRMN): Up 115%. I was extremely enthusiastic about this stock, as I saw GPS’s becoming the next iPod, and thought Garmin had the best chance of capturing that. And they did – up until them losing their source of maps, Navteq (which they later regained). This permanently damaged the stock however, and it is now worth half of what it was in October. Luckily, I sold it right after this announcement, taking a short term loss but saving most of my gains.
• Dawson Geophysical (DWSN): Up 47%. Dawson found oil for companies by blowing up dynamite underground and studying how seismic waves reflected around. Cool stuff. Sold in October after it had cooled down for a month.
• Aecom Technology (ACM): Up 48%. Probably the “easiest” gain I had, in that it went up straight for nearly two months. This was a global infrastructure play, that especially benefitted from growth in China. Like Dawson, it also flattened out in October.
• Audible (ADBL): Up 23%. An online source for audiobooks. I mostly mention this because I sold it shortly before it was bought out by Apple! Ah well.
• Baidu (BIDU): Up 112%. The Google of China. I always regretted missing out on Google, so I figured this would be a good alternative – and it was, up until recently. Luckily I sold this before most of its recent decline. I still feel as though it will be a strong stock once the market regains some of its footing in the tech sector.

… and losers

• Comscore (SCOR): I work a lot in online advertising, and saw how much we were spending, so I tried investing in a company that profited from that. Unfortunately, this particular company did not, and is still a very volatile stock.
• Loop.net (LOOP): No matter how good the fundamentals look, this stock was a great lesson in why you can’t ignore common sense such as not investing in any stock relating to the housing market.
• Jones Soda (JSDA): I knew this one was quite the gamble, and thought I had found the bottom at 10. This was after a drop from nearly 35. It went up to 14 before falling all the way down to 6.5, where it is now. Luckily I sold it with only a small loss.
• Crocs (CROX): I actually ended up with a gain in this stock, but that gain was quartered after a horrible earnings report.
• Volcom (VLCM): Another clothing stock that I tried to capitalize on. My younger sister, who knows quite a lot about clothing, had never heard of them – maybe I should have taken that to heart!