THE moment of truth has arrived. It is time to look back at my performance this year and decide whether I am a master of the financial highways or still in the learner-driver category.

In revisiting the past year, one thing is striking. Last January - when the world was awash with cash, banks were falling over each other to lend and oil was only - a barrel compared with - now - seems a world away. Oh, and none of us was aware of the time-bomb ticking in America’s sub-prime mortgage market.

If the past is another country, the first five months now look like another planet. With the onset of the credit crunch, the financial world turned on its axis. Whole sectors - financials, retailers, housebuilders, travel, leisure and many industrials - joined property as a toxic waste-land investors entered at their peril. In the second half, it mattered crucially which sectors you were invested in.

Given the pitfalls, I have done pretty well, but it doesn’t feel that way. Overall, I made a gain of 13.5%. That is hardly spectacular but it is not bad in a year when both the FTSE 100 was up just 4% and the FTSE 250 and the AIM indexes fell 5% and 1% respectively. It has helped that, for the second year running, I have taken more cash out of the portfolio than I have invested anew.

The Heaven side of my portfolio - my supposed blue-chip holdings - made 14%. That is before dividends and is net of cash invested or realised. The fact that it finished in positive territory was down to two well-timed sales. I got shot of heat treatment and testing group Bodycote at 315p shortly before the Swiss engineering firm, Sulzer, aborted its proposed bid.

Bodycote shares have since collapsed to 186.25p. And I sold the rump of my holding in pub chain Mitchells & Butlers at 853p. The shares are now 419.75p.

I missed the boat on selling Woolworths, now 12.75p compared with 36p at the start of the year. The company’s value has shrunk so much I have now relegated it to the Hell side of the portfolio. However, I reckon it is now selling at a huge discount to net worth.

I gave myself an added headache by buying Kingfisher, the DIY chain. Now is not the time to be in retail or housing stocks and Kingfisher is a mix of the two. Like Woolies, the shares trade at a discount to break-up value.

As for the rest of my Heaven stocks, the heavy weighting towards food, drink and household goods looks about right for the times. A couple of these shares have hit new highs in the past month. However, as a precautionary move, I have sold half my holding in the banknote printer De La Rue, at 917p. Up 52% on the year, De La Rue will not swim against a real bear-market tide - however well it is doing. My gain here amounts to 210%, achieved over three-and-three-quarter years.

The speculative, all-or-noth-ing stocks that make up the Hell side of the portfolio achieved a slightly lower return of just under 13%. Extremes of performance were even more marked, though that is much what one would expect. All-or-nothing stocks tend to do what they say on the tin.

I had a fabulous trade in Sirius Exploration, a junior mining stock that turned from ugly duckling to swan with a reverse takeover that generated a 73% profit. I rode a dramatic recovery in oil and gas hopeful Genesis Petroleum, up 151% on the year. A takeover of Revenue Assurance, a service provider to energy utilities, produced a 65% uplift.

But there were some horrors, too. I halved my money in two oil-linked stocks, Forum Energy and Quadrise Fuels International, though I had taken a fat profit selling part of my Quadrise holding last year. I lost more than a quarter of my money in NHS supplier Pinnacle Staffing - at least I was quick to cut my loss.

Cutting losses quickly is not my forte, so my new year’s resolution is to be more ruthless with investments once they go wrong. Dithering will be “so last year”.