Impressive week, Neke, congrats. What about previous years what's your automated vs. discretionary P&L? (Trying to answer myself here why you don't simply ditch your discretionary trading). Keep it up, positive is always good!
Weekly Update for week 18/50 ended 5/13/2011 Bad week, down 15K (4.3%). On Monday, ROSE gave me a drubbing with a runaway move that cost my automation 8K. Recovered nicely the rest of the week mostly through discretionary trades and was well into positive territory till Friday. Gave back all the gains and more with a call option on Agilent (A). Will be revising my rules for maximum size on options: right now it is based on nominal value, and the limit is $1million in notional value per position: it is obvious the risk for that ITM position was too much. For the week, automation lost 11K, while discretionary lost 3K. Code: Opening Balance: 338,011 Net gain for the week 14,684 ------------------------------------------------ Net Balance: 323,327 Number of Trades 31 Number of Profitable Trades 16 Since Inception of Thread 01/8/2011 - 5/13/2011 Opening Balance: 335,899 Net loss(Less Margin Interest) -12,572 (down 3.7%) ------------------------------------------------ Net Balance 323,327 Number of Trades 353 Number of Profitable Trades 196 TOP/BOTTOM TRADES TICKER ENTRY DATE/TIME EXIT DATE/TIME QTY PURCH SOLD AMT GAIN/LOSS TYPE MMAY21201126.0CALL 2011-05-11-09-44-12 2011-05-11-11-34-48 25000 55000 69625 14278 M CALL SPYMAY212011133.0CALL 2011-05-12-09-49-46 2011-05-12-13-38-49 11300 19097 29945 10687 SPY CALL ROSE 2011-05-09-10-49-40 2011-05-09-15-22-02 4223 208163 199827 -8367 SHORT AMAY21201150.0CALL 2011-05-13-09-37-59 2011-05-13-10-47-51 20000 85000 57600 -27689 A CALL
Discretionary has always outperformed the automated - until last year. It's too soon to say give up on discretionary, but I am surely trying to automate as much as I can.
Neke - what strategy is your automation utilizing? The ROSE trade had a classic double top formation with an ideal shooting star candle into supply around 10:45 EST for the proper short entry that could've been ridden down with a technical stop for about a $ 1.50, right into demand. Or you could've played long from the open as price was into siginficant demand-- the chart would've told u there was no way u should've been shorting at that point.
Hard to say. I don't really know NEKE's strategies. Most time he take RTM (if so, he would lose a lot on LNKD), but sometimes he does follow the trend. However, I am almost sure he played LNKD. that's where the action was.