Dave, What kind of size are you trading? I like the way you trade. You can make some real money and handle good size. I have never understood how there could be much potential in Hitman's style of scalping mostly thin second and third tier slow movers. Anyway, please keep the journal going.
Dave- 250 trades a day? what size? your firm must love you. like someone else said , can you please provide entry and exit prices. where did you snowboard? I had my first session of the year Tuesday and I'm sore as hell. Happy trading. uptick2000
Dave that's a fascinating way of trading but I got to tell you I can't ever imagine anyone making money in the long haul with that style. Well let me put it this way I certainly couldn't. By the way how was snowboarding yesterday.
Let me see if I can answer all the questions that have been posed to me. Snowboarding was good yesterday, hasn't snowed here in about two weeks though, so it was a bit icy, but since I'm getting better I didn't fall down as much. I've found that running has helped work out my legs enough so that I don't feel like I got my ass kicked after finishing a day of snowboarding, but its a blast after you are confident enough to go down the hill fast and make those tight turns. My volume varies on what type of trading I'm doing. If the market is slow and not trending well I'll do baskets of only a 100 shares, and if I think the trade is going to be layup or if I have some tight stop losses I'll go up to 600 shares, anything past that there seems to be a lot of slippage, with this light volume, I can blow through a couple of price levels with only 600 shares. And try getting out of 600 shares with only a 100 shares on each price level and 10 cent difference from the previous price level, that is too much like calling the bottom. On the question of making money using my trading style which is whatever works at the time, most people can't do it, hell sometimes I don't think I can do it. But I'm taking trading strategies that have worked in the past for me, or those I personally know. Scalping, I made a career of it for two years, before I tried other things. The position trading, I tried a bit on my own, but thanks to a friend of mine, I've learned the fine art of position trading (though at times I revert back to scalping) but man scalping is tough, not like the old days where each price level was a 1/16 or 6 cents, now with pennies, even if it clears a bunch six price levels your only up 6 cents a share, and then momentum stops. Back to my friend, his trading strategy allowed for in a two year period to never have a down month net. This past year I believe he's gone 8 for 12 months positive. He's spent thousands on backtesting by programmers, every month he has his programmer go back and crunch an ungodly amount of numbers on all NASDAQ stocks, using multiple filters, guidelines, stops, based on spreads and some other things. From that he is able fine tune and constantly perfect his trading strategy. On the issue of basket trading like in WorldCo. and some other firms, I know people that have done real well doing this, especially if you pick the hot sector of the week, Oils and Oil Services were hot a few months back and it was easy money, now I'm leaning toward the Biotechs and SOX. You pretty much have to trade in an office to basket trade because you need every possible advantage to get quick executions and to recognize opportunties. Can this be done at home? Yes, but I won't try to learn at home, trade in an office first, see how it works, cause you can get screwed on baskets big time if your executions and quotes aren't up to par. Now for the trading today, I forgot to print out my trade sheets today. Sucks I know. I can tell you again, I flated the day again. Three days straight, not feeling to bad about it though, markets I watch never really broke either way to much. I really don't want to try guess the times and prices of my executions, b/c I don't want anyone to see a different chart pattern then one I though I remembered and think that was what your supposed to look for. A trader next to me, who has been doing a little better than me of late traded INTU today. Was a nice consolidation and breakdown early today...followed by another consolidation and breakdown. I think he locked in 2 points out of a 3 point move down. Time to take a nap.
Here is the following information I won't be sharing on this board: 1. Exactly how much I am up or down for the day. I will tell you if I'm flat, down or up, just prefer to keep specific financials to myself. I relate this to asking someone you don't know how much they make a year, some people don't mind sharing, some folks do. 2. I won't go into details about who I trade through b/c of the fact that I don't want to get involved in recruiting, defending my firm, getting those that want to defend there firms, etc... and answer questions more on my firm then the trading itself. I think this kind of discussion has taken away from a lot of the other trading journals. I recruit guys, but mostly through my connections and not a post on a board, not that there is anything wrong with that. 3. I will not go into my arrangements (commissions and payouts) with my firm, b/c of a contract that I signed. Lets say it's a fair deal for both me and my firm. Even without this information, I still hope that you can find some relevance to my journal.
perhaps we should change your name to "TightLipsDave".. btw.. you have ended 3 days flat.. exactly how do you define flat? +/- 50 dollars? 100 dollars? 300 dollars? just curious.. good luck tomorrow.. -qwik
I voted "Blah" for your journal because you fail to disclose your stats! Might just be me, but the stats help establish some character and ability. If Hitman went a year just saying I'm up today and down yesterday, I guarantee I'd put him on ignore to save space. He started his journal losing money, but had the confidence in himself to know he'd make it to profitability. Good luck though, maybe others will be more interested.
I disagree with you guys and I can see why Dave doesn't want to blab his business all over this board. We have enough self -identified "trading legends" around here as it is, but then they have the gift. Some of us little people just like to do our thing in relative anonymity, at least until I self-publish a few books and get my chatroom going...LOL As for the credibility of publishing results, get real. You have no way of knowing what these clowns actually do, although I do tend to believe Hitman and Stockk because their results seem realistic. I enjoy Hitman's thread but more for the soap opera aspects of it than the trading. Let's face it, his style is kinda boring, making a dime here and a dime there on some slow mover, all in fear that the specialist will crunch him. He can never trade any real size or make any real money, it's too labor intensive and liquidity constrained. Maybe I'm dead wrong, but that's my read. And don't get me wrong, I have a lot of time for Hitman and respect what he's been able to accomplish and I wish him all the best. But let's cut Dave some slack and see what he can do. He seems to have some good ideas and I like his aggressive style.