For most investors, 2011 has been a challenging year. Even though losses or lower-than-usual performance can be tough to face, it’s important to sit down and examine this year’s overall market activity and each of the positions you held.

The education section of this year-end MarketSmith Stock Guide outlines tips on what to include when analyzing your 2011 investments, along with some helpful examples. With the benefit of hindsight, you’ll gain important insights from last year’s successes, failures, and missed opportunities that you can apply to your investing activity in 2012.

This December Post Analysis edition also offers stock screens that provide a great starting point for assessing the best-performing stocks of 2011. Take note of the fundamental and technical characteristics they exhibited before they moved up in price — MarketSmith’s markup, journal, and pattern recognition features are perfect for this — and keep those notes close at-hand as you look for solid investing ideas in the coming year.

Featured Screens

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Access the archived pdf of this month’s stock guide below: