I hope he had a better week than I did , but honestly I think neke is doing little more than gambling and the market isn't what it was when he was making 400% gains.
Beau, I realise there are people stalking me every Friday night. Yes, you are right; there was no incentive to come here and post my brutal week(below). Was instead spending the time programming my next set of come-back ideas. Hopefully will get everything in place before earnings season kicks off in earnest.
Weekly Update for week 11/50 ended 3/31/2012 Mournful week, down 19.5K (9.7%). Steady losses on Mon, Tues, Wed combined to poke a stunning hole in my account. No outlandish loser, but a series of (bad luck?) ensured the combined damage was massive. I would put on say four limit orders; the two that filled get to be the big losers while the two that grazed my limit (barely missing) proceeded to generate gains without me in. That is the summary of those three days. So I am not going to beat myself merciless on those trades, but will take steps to make "luck" on my side next time. Focus for the next couple of weeks is finalizing the definition/programming of the next set of come-back strategies and slimming down of existing core strategies. Code: Opening Balance: 200,861 Net loss for the week 19,458 ------------------------------------------------ Net Balance: 181,403 Since Inception of Thread 01/18/2012 - 03/31/2012 Opening Balance: 203,729 Net loss (10,326)(Down 5.1%) Cash Withdrawal (12,000) ------------------------------------------------ Net Balance 181,403
Sounds like you traded well, in that you followed your rules. The fact that you didnt have any catastrophic errors in judgement, but just a normal run of a few bad trades, and still managed to lose 10% of your account should scream to you that you are trading with way too much size. But you've been getting that advice almost weekly for 3 or 4 years now.
This is my biggest worry about swing trading. In swing trading, your trading frequency prevents you from really knowing if you have a statistically significant positive expectancy. Those of you who think day-trading is impossible and swing trading easier are likely only riding on the illusion of positive expectancy when in fact it is just noise. Day trading will give you better statistics, thus it is "harder" -- because it is showing you the truth quicker than swing trading where you are not sure for many many many years. Just my opinions.
Is there a core strategy here? Is it shorting stocks that gap up? Is it going long stocks that gap down? I always wondered what made him decide to buy or sell stocks/options. It seems like all neke does is fade moves and trade countertrend. Now, that can work but doing it blindly is a disaster waiting to happen.
Really the TD Ameritrade Strategy Desk is an inferior platform, but, then again, if I wasn't trading futures or etfs mostly, I would find it very difficult to backtest options trading strategies. Even to extrapolate an edge from underlyings if the options prices are only being approximated, this is the biggest concern about your trading I have. Not that you haven't found something that worked in the past, or whether it will work going forward, but whether the data you have is sufficient enough to prove to be statistically significant longer term (ie:I don't know of continuous data in options strike prices or how you're performing your analysis).
I do not think I am putting on a size bigger than I can deal with. If +/-10% a week is the norm, I would say yes. But I want to look at this week as isolated. Over the past 3/4 years I have actually been reducing my size, and that shows in the weekly percentages. I went back and computed the statistics for 2008-2012, and below shows the weekly percentage moves Code: Average Weekly Move Max. Weekly %Gain Min Weekly %Gain (Absolute percentage) 2008 11.0 51.9 -19.7 2009 8.1 23.5 -19.5 2010 6.2 26.8 -24.3 2011 5.3 14.8 -13.8 2012 4.4 7.6 -9.7 It is clear the average weekly move (up/down) has been coming down over the years, because of smaller sizing / reduced volatility.