Best or Worst Trades Ever

Discussion in 'Trading' started by rs7, Jul 11, 2002.

  1. PubliasEnigma

    PubliasEnigma Guest

    My thoughts on the subject exactly Dark and as usual you found a better way of expressing it :)

    Publias
     
    #41     Jul 12, 2002
  2. Pabst

    Pabst

    Good pitching beats good hitting.

    Which reminds of a Buffet quote,"the markets always pitching but you don't have to swing."
     
    #42     Jul 12, 2002
  3. rs7

    rs7

    I use Reuters and Dow Jones.
     
    #43     Jul 12, 2002
  4. best trade:the day the emlx kid posted the bogus news release and emlx tanked like 50 points.i went long at about 61 and they halted it.it opened like 130 i finally got out at 123.

    worst trade:was trading jdsu a lot.i came in one morning and the premarket ask was 20 points less than it was the night before so i took it thinking someone entered a wrong order.turns out jdsu had split that night and i forgot about it.so i owned jdsu way higher than it opened.no they wouldnt bust it.fortunatly it was tiny lot.
     
    #44     Jul 12, 2002
  5. One thing that I want to comment on in consideration of best trades is to make a distinction between the "best" as in managed best with a clear plan and perfect and flawless execution and "luckiest"...Five years ago when I started I would have never known the difference between the two as I was a wild gunslinger shooting for the stars and taking alot of risk that I was not warranted...Sure this led to a number of big out of the blue winners with some crazy options plays...Unfortunately, most of those profits were given back in those first 2 years of trading insanity...

    I know my worst trade of all time...Series of two positions on at the same time...NSCP in July, 1997(actually almost the 5 year anniversary of this bomb)...Went long 5,000 shares of this stock at an average cost of about 41.00 only to liquidate the whole position around 35 3/4(pre-decimilazation)...At the same time had a bunch of AAPL which 2 weeks later spiked thru the roof when Steve Jobs returned...Sold the AAPL and the NSCP in a frenzied newbie panic...That series of trades still gives me shivers as I was margined to the hilt and was getting my feet wet in a typical bull market summer rally(first year trading started in 1997, summer)...
     
    #45     Jul 13, 2002
  6. Firstly, Darkhorse, i have no problem with you disagreeing with me. If my answers seem curt it's because I'm not in the habit of making longwinded speeches where a few short words will suffice. Perhaps YOU could do well to look at the deeper level of my "nitpicking" and realise I'm simply pointing out potential errors in thinking that could do much harm later on.

    I felt offense/defense was a bad analogy to trading. You can't tell me in sport that defense is the key to winning! If all you can do is play defense, you just won't lose. You gotta be able to put the ball in the basket to win.

    In trading, i would be the first to agree that taking care of your losses is 75% of the game. In fact, I bet I can mathematically quantify just what sort of an impact various levels of losers have on overall trading better than most people.

    In trading, I would equate "offensive prowess" with BEING ABLE to recognise those "layups" and "sitters".
     
    #46     Jul 14, 2002