I was hugely frustrated yesterday.

I told my subscribers to take a 33% profit on a seven-month trade in a speculative stock position, and the annualized return on my recommended portfolio actually fell.

Seriously. We took a 33% profit in just seven months, and the result collapsed the annualized return of my trading portfolio from over 500% to less than 400%.

That killed me. But it was the right thing to do.

The stock was one I had recommended earlier this year when it was trading near support. It seemed to take forever, but the stock finally rallied off of support and started bumping into resistance. So, I told subscribers to take their gain.

Heck, a 33% return in seven months is pretty darn good for any stock trader. But it was much less than the gains traders have gotten used to in the Delta Direct portfolio. And our annualized gain took a hit.

You see, in my Delta Direct blog – which is a trading service only available to subscribers of my Delta Report – we’ve made 37 trades so far in 2017. We’ve closed 36 of them. Thirty of them have been profitable.

In other words, we’ve been profitable on better than 83% of the trades. The average trade has lasted less than 18 days. And the average return was better than 19%.

So, if you add it all together, we have an annualized return of 397%.

Of course, I do have an open position in sugar – which is down 8% right now. So, that’s going to bring the annualized return down a bit based on the current price.

But really… since the aggressive Delta Direct trades have done so well, nobody’s complaining much about my sugar trade.

We’ve also done well on our more conservative Delta Report trades.

So far in 2017, I’ve made 37 recommendations. Over 78% of them have been profitable. The average gain has been better than 15%, and the average holding period has been just 38 days. That works out to an annualized gain of 146%.

That’s on the conservative stuff.

There’s no doubt… It’s been a great year.

But I know 2018 will be even better. And I want you to be on board for it.

You can continue to get my daily broad market insights here in the Market Minute. I’ll continue to write up where I think the market is headed and what I think are the most important trading developments.

I appreciate your willingness to even read what I write on a daily basis. Thank you.

But, if you’d like some specific recommendations… if you’d like some of the advice that has generated the returns I mentioned earlier… then you should take advantage of the subscription offer my publisher just recently provided.

You can get all of the details right here…

Best regards and good trading,

Jeff Clark

Reader Mailbag

In today’s mailbag, a Delta Report subscriber writes in about Jeff’s frustrating trade win…

Great call this morning. It provided the opportunity to sell some slow performers at elevated prices. You were right on target. Keep up the great calls.

– Kim B.

And another with their cryptocurrency strategy…

Jeff, I’ve seen articles about money shifting to bitcoin from gold. I’m one of those people. I’m so tired of the manipulation in gold and silver. I look at cryptocurrencies as generally being free of outside influence. Perhaps I’m naive.

Now I wonder what you think the impact will be with the introduction of bitcoin futures. I can only envision even more volatility.

I plan to watch from the sidelines with great anticipation of the three-ring circus that this will become. Love your work and the education I’ve gotten.

– John M.

As always, feel free to send in your thoughts, stories, questions, or suggestions right here…