Come one, come all, folks. It's the greaaatest shown earth! The Annual Eliiiiiite Trader Swing Trading Competition! Or something like that. Anyway, I think it would be fun (and educational) to start a swing trading journal where we can post our trades and keep a tally of how people are doing. My idea of it would be to start off anybody that wants to participate with a nominal amount 'play money' (yes, I can hear the groans!), say $25,000 and have them post their entries and exits, along with position size here and I'll keep track of the results and generally keep things tidy. (With a little help from ole Magna, of course.) I think people should be free to either just post trades or, if they like, to offer explanations, reasoning and insights into their trades, along with lessons learnt after closing trades etc. Of course, we'll have to keep a tight lid on that in case the thread runs away into other discussions, but I think if we just allow commentary on the trade by the person making it we should be ok. For prices of entry and exit I think the fairest thing would be use the price of the stock at the time of the post. That would stop people saying "yeah I bought it at $20.00" after it's already moved to $20.20. It would also probably be a good idea if people included how much %risk the position they take represents. (I'd work it out myself, but just to save me the time.) Of course no one should be able to exceed reg T, so no taking 1000 GM 2000 TXN and 1500 BAC when you've only got $25,000. To forestall the likely "it's only papertrading, it's meaningless" posts that some people [cough, db, cough, cough ] feel they have to make, yes follk it is 'only' papertrading. However, at least in this public forum you won't be able to cheat yourself by saying "oh but in 'real life' I would have got out here", so at least it keeps you honest. The element of risk is, of course, missing and there are some from the school of thought that says without this element the whole exercise is worthless. I'm from the school of thought that says if you can't do it on paper you're exceedingly unlikely to be able to do it for real. Well, that's about it. If anyone has any ideas about how this should be set up I'd like to hear your input, so feel to free to post away. Hopefully we can get enough people interested to make this fun and worthwhile. And just a note to all the daytraders who only care about "the next five minutes", I was once in your shoes too, even made some half decent coin for a while, but it's probably a better idea to expand one's horizons and take a look at other trading styles, 'cos you never know when yours might become obsolete.
$25,000 account start balance for a Futures trader at daytime margin of $500 per contract, and a overnight margin of $4000 per contract. I will be holding the 5 ES SHORT position overnight and through the weekend (5 X $4000 = $20,000). I have proper margin at this time for this position to hold. Chris
The question of whether the money is real or not isn't so much the issue as how the trades are recorded. Everybody has such different styles that it is too tough to ask the scalpers to show their orders ahead of time vs. the swing traders with day jobs who have the luxury of putting in their orders the night before. Maybe the contest should be in a couple of parts e.g. intraday traders in one thread and swing traders in another. Then you can have specific formats for reporting the trades. Just a thought. Albert
Was just gonna ask about futures. Chris, maint. margin for overnites is less once you own the contract, you may have some space to add.
This is a Swing/Position Trading contest....this will be very easy to accomplish entries and exits! This is not difficult at all...postings should be minimal at best (entries and exits posts). Good Fortunes! Chris BTW, Banjo...I was trying to be fair to any others! LOL
Hi Al. Yes, it is almost impossible to keep a real time record of scalpers' trades. But I'm aiming this competition at swing traders, which by my definition exlcudes any intraday trading at all. Of course, it's possible that someone's stops could be taken out on the day they enter, so they may be forced to make a daytrade, but those should be quite the exception. Also, if traders would like to post their exits ahead of time, we should be able to give them their exit price if it's a fairly liquid stock (or futures contract), otherwise I'll have to check out the the intraday action to see if they realistically could have been filled there. Well, someone else might like to keep an eye on that too, if it gets too busy around here.
No probs Chris, if that's the way you'd like to do it. I think it would be nice if people went into the reasoning behind their trades a little. Not so much for me, but I think it helps one's own thinking to put ideas down on paper, where they often become a lot clearer than the jumbled state they exist in in our minds. While I have billed this as a contest, it would be a good opportunity to work on oneself too.
I think your idea is a good one. I'm game. I'm not going to let AMT have all the fun. If the likes of AMT, marketsurfer and Nihabashi will enter into the contest then I will likely have very formidable opponents. Let the games begin.
Long 500 IACI since 28.50 from last week. Will verify date soon. Off to snooze..this mkt has me punch drunk! Best David