Who wouldn’t be stressed? The Dow dropped 4% this week, oil is at staggering numbers, steel and gold are racing to new highs. Taken together, that’s a lot of market uncertainty.

In fact, the week started quite poorly for me, but by mid-day Thursday I was certain I was safely in the black. Sadly, it was not to be. The wheels simply came off the bus. From about 2:30EST on Thursday to the end of trading on Friday, my portfolio lost more than $1400 in value. That is staggering to me. Unsettling. Discouraging.

Looking at the week overall, I ended down just over $400 from where I started. It could have been a whole lot worse.

Starting with a relatively small investment pool myself (in the range of $5000), it wouldn’t take long for my “dispensable” investment fund to simply disappear. Hence my first goal, at least in an ideal sense, has been to maintain capital. Unfortunately, with my ongoing emphasis on specific industries, namely agriculture stocks, oil and gas investments, and metals, it feels like perhaps I’ve strayed far from the security of “diversity”.

But I’m leaving that to my RRSPs and my financial planner. Diversified portfolios are his job. At the very least, I hope to finish the year ahead of where I started. If I accomplish that, I will have considered it a success.