I hit the magic 40 a couple of month ago and things are not where I thought I'd be at that time. Married with kids (at least that's working as far as I know), broke 190 pounds for the first time in my life and after having a terrible trading year last year this year isn't looking much better. I'm starting this journal as a motivational tool and hope that over the next 7 month I'm 20 pounds lighter, in better shape and have collected 80k via my trading. The last eight trading days have been brutal to my P&L and you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that my main position is short the market. I typically trade a lot of options but with low volatility I reduce my size so right now we're in single digit contract territory. Good luck to you all, it's rough out there !!
Just in passing, "as far as I know". As I am just chatting with a lad who has found out his older kids were not all his biologically speaking. So be very grateful.
Trading since about 05, seriously trading (> 2k trades / year) since 07. At least half the trades are automated.
So what is your trading strategy? Hopefully your handle isn't an indicator of your plan. Why are you short in a market that's been going up and up with the Fed injecting massive liquidity?
Couple of reasons. I use IB and Thinkorswim. Only IB provides a decent API. So most Thinkorswim trades have to be entered manually. IB is mostly used for futures and stocks and that works well with automation. Thinkorswim is used mostly for discretionary trading with options and it has a lot of tools I use (e.g. scanners) that would take a lot of time to automate in IB.
Good question In hindsight I'd have done better buying S&P futures when it hit 666 and selling them later @ 1900. On a more serious note, I'm short cause my trading strategies are all mean reverting, they do well in sideway markets and the last 24 month have been terrible. I do have to say one of my largest short position the last three years have been bonds and that worked out eventually, just took a long time to resolve itself. I'm hoping eventually we'll see the same with the broader market but who knows ...
Trust me, neither a masochist nor perma-bear (at least not knowingly). The situation was reverse in 08/09, I was super long at the end but what helped back the was I had an extra cushion due to market volatility. So when the market bounced in 09/10 I did fairly well. As it moved just up though I got shorter and shorter, I guess I missed the memo that told me when to buy and where to sell.