After such a violent failure and drop, price is having trouble going down after DL break and Ret around 17. Strange.
yea am a little self conscious about that long ago registration date ..time constraints and not too smart were main problems ....lot of dead ends in this game ...I'll recollect thoughts and elaborate further in a future post ..
Well you ask for it Db: Pre internet era - I walked into a Merrill Lynch office and told them i wanted to invest some money.THey had me talk with some young broker,we set up an account and bought some stocks which included about $100.00 commish. per purchase. Some went up some went down, every couple months my broker would call me and we would sell some and buy some new ones. This pattern repeated itself for several years never making any money for me , just generating commish for my brokers who would be coming and leaving Merrill Lynch constantly. Closed Merrill Lynch account. pre internet era- I heard some really entertaining guy on the radio , just remember his name was reynolds. He is talking up these penny stocks on the Vancouver exchange. Told which broker to use etc. (some asian guy in Camel Back New mexico or maybe Arizona can't recall) commish was $89.00 one way.I start buying his recommendations and they seemed to be doing good. Then one day the guy is not on the radio anymore.I called the station and they told me he was arrested for securitys fraud . His recommendations all quickly went to zero generating me some more tax write offs. circa internet bubble era ,a coworker Ted, came by and told me he was learning to trade stocks. His method was to read yahoo message boards and get info there to make purchases.He used a Dateck acct.$25.00 round trip ..cheap compared to the $200.00 I used to pay Merill Lynch brokers.He started buying up shares of First Plus finantial for .20 a share , one day the stock shot up to $2.00 a share and he made a quick 3 grand. I should say Ted is not a stupid person , actually a very high IQ guy. He was now hooked on trading ...said he would soon be able to purchase a hunting lodge in Canada and would be inviting us all up.Also commented that there would be a day soon when he would not bother to pick up a $20.00 dollar bill if he dropped it.He next cashes in his 401k taking the penalty, and borrows (ouch) as much money as possible from friends and family .. ..this would be his initial trading capital... No need to work anymore so he quits his job ..think you all know where this is going.within 3 months he is flat broke from trading .. wife divorces him and he had to move in with his aged mother.During this time i too started buying these cheap penny stocks and if they went up a little would quickly sell and if they went down would of course hold on hoping they would go back up after all you don't lose anything till you sell ...they did'nt come back though just kept going down ..often to zero.luckily I Traded small size and only lost a couple thousand. Next phase - Riet preferreds- During the internet bubble the riet market had crashed for no good reason other than that everyone was putting thier money in tech stocks and making 20 or 30 % a year. The 10 or 12% gauranteed you could get on investment grade preferreds did'nt seem like squat.I started buying them though and just collected the dividends.I would watch the prices of them each day on my newly opened IB account. Wow only a dollar to buy 100 shares ! I started to notice they would often get misspriced , for example PSA public storage would have a bunch of series of preferreds A , B , C ,D trading at a price that offered a 10% yield while series E would trade at a price giving you a 12% yield. So I would just buy the E series, wait for the price to correct usually in a few days then sell.I did'nt have to wait 3 months to collect my dividends this was amazing to me. They would also often get misspriced around the time they would go x div., like dropping way more than the amount of the dividend. Made some consistent money on this and had to send money to the irs every 3 months instead of just at the end of the year.I used to call IB and tell them you need to add series such and such stock and they were really good about adding it, even sent me a christmas presant that year.This worked but i was nervous about trading size due to lack of liquidity which made it impossible to set stop losses.Sold most of my preferreds at a nice profit and decided to move on to more liquid instruments. Next phase: just hire a stock picking service - tried quite a few , all of them sucked , scam artists period.Morpheus , short boy , many others Traded small , just lost a little next phase : guru of the month - follow me and learn to trade sometimes for a fee , con artists period , wasted lot of time but just sim traded these, SO many i can't even remember them all , Jack Hershey , Nihabashi , woody , stock gappers , the lion .com. uncle fred , lawyer girl the list goes on next phase : spaghetti charts, you just have to learn this secret indicator like Woodies CCI and anyone can learn to trade,tried vollume bars, range bars , woodys bars lol,divergences, wasted a lot of time just sim traded these and none worked next phase : Technical analysis, read some books (EDwards and Magee) and started studying charts and watching S/R levels, not even trading just reading. next phase : price action- started reading various price action threads like AHG here and Beyond the candles plus James15 over at Forex factory. next phase : trading plan - actually wrote down some rules and made a plan (price action based) , then forward tested it with small size (swing trading stocks) Did a little better than break even. next phase: stopped trading more reading just focusing on price action. FOund DB's thread and have been sim trading his method with replay. His methods really strike me as how one should trade.With the replay i can just sit and watch price at my leisure. Starting to see the difference between up and down . Not sure why I've stuck with this for so long , I've just always found it very interesting. Been dabbling in the markets for decades and never made much money from trading. I did however make a lot of money saving a little from my paycheck every week and letting it compound over time. Am considering early retirement now.
Wow babe! You've come a long way. It's quite an achievement to continue with the quest. Are you still using the old methods or are you a convert now? Gringo
I have never gone back to a previous phase .....Am just focused on Db's stuff now ... its the best I've found ...its flexible and adaptable to various market conditions ..I also follow your thread ....some day I'll post my REALLY embarrassing high dollar loss moves :eek:
No need to post anything personel the fact is if all of us had it figured out chances are we wouldn't be on et in the first place!
I've read this story many times over the years, so you needn't feel alone. And I'll read it again many times in the years to come because kids think they have it all figured out, and it's "so easy". What I find interesting is that you appear to be understanding it fairly easily, while nearly all traders who have some experience find it impossibly difficult (often due largely to ego). Those who find it easy to understand generally have no experience at all. In any case, I'm glad you're finding it useful. Thanks for taking the time to respond. Don't be a stranger.
Been there, done that. Lost my first account to penny stocks as well (that was so long ago) . Great to see you found the right path, welcome to the straight line team Babe.