Did you beat the SAP500 or are you only in the black?

For this time period, it turns out that which comparison you make doesn't matter- the S&P 500 was about the same when I started investing in 2006 and when I wrote this comment in 2011. Since I wrote this comment, the majority of my money has been in index funds (I sold BP after I owned it for a year to lock in the 50% gain while avoiding the tax hit for short-term trading), so comparisons to the index funds I'm holding don't seem particularly enlightening. The primary investment decision I've made since then in dollar terms--not investing in Bitcoin when I first seriously considered it because of laziness--turned out to be a huge mistake (but still a retrospective validation of the opportunity approach).