during my best performance with this journal i generally held 3-4 companies. im done with this stupid all in plays, i did it on intel and get crushed and just did it on cat and am getting crushed. i was getting a little over confident and need to go back to what was working. in the mean time i need to manage this all in trade im in and figure out what i will do to try and ease the pain a little.
I have not read the whole thread. Why dont you just concentrate on SPY. IWM, QQQ and may be DIA. CBOE has just introduced weekly options on 5-6 expiry dates in the coming months. Just like SPX.
Out cat 82.30, after thinking the problem wasn't cat so much. I go for high beta stocks and it did just that. The problem is I got impatient and got back into the market before believing it was about to turn around.
positive psychology - today is payday and just pumped my account 2.5k Initial deposit: 13,500 Account value: 25,065 No holdings currently. i sold CAT at the perfect time today as it's down $1.6 since about 2 hours ago when i sold it.
Just wanted to let people know I'm going to become much less active in this thread. I just bought 20 companies last Friday that I feel I could buy and hold forever. I love the new job the pay is great and I'm going to be able to save 50%+ of my income, but unfortunately it doesn't leave me with enough screen time during the day that I'd like. I didn't buy any of the companies on margin, so I may still do the occasional swing trade when I have strong conviction and I will probably post it here. I do intend to sell those companies and go back to swing trading at some point in like 3-6 months once I get more comfortable with my job and can have more screen time. For shits and giggles I'll post my 20 companies here right now that I bought. I will still do weekly updates. And hopefully I find at least 1 good swing trade a week or so I can post in here from my margin. Initial deposit: $13,000 Current value: $25,237 Current holdings: ABT AFL CAT GD GE GIS HAS IBM ITW JNJ PEP MCD MDT MMM NKE NSC OXY TGT UTX VZ I get this is a trading forum and not a buy and hold forum. So I will only post when I do a swing trade with my margin.
Put a big swing trade on OXY yesterday @78.06 Sorry for the delayed post but the forums were down for me or something. Also wanted to update real quick on 2012: Total return was 22.32% vs S&P 16%..pretty unhappy with this but I attribute most of it to being unemployed for 4-5 months and one bad trade in INTC where entire account took about a 10% hit..at any rate it was an outperformance albeit small at 6%. For comparison in 2011 I did 23.84% vs S&P 2.11%. I will be happy if I can average 20-25% a year, regardless of what the indecises do. I'm hoping for a better 2013. Sold ABT and ABBV in my buy and hold positions as I do not like the companies being split up. Current account values: Total deposits:$14,500 (added $700 last month) Total value: $27,196 I am officially out of credit card debt and just moved into a much cheaper living situation and hope to be adding ~2000 a month to this journal.
Account value ended 1/11: $27,549 Total deposits: $14,200 (last weeks update was incorrect and I didn't notice before the 30 minute time period) Still in big OXY swing trade, had a very nice week in OXY but it's still showing great signs. Oxy is only trade I'm in atm aside from my buy and hold positions.
account value: $28,040 WoW gain: 1.78% SPY WoW gain: 0.98% total deposit: $14,200 still in my OXY trade. It's doing exactly what I was expecting. Hoping for a breakout next week to the 85-86 level where I will trim most if not all.
just sold OXY @ $83.58. I don't feel comfortable holding big positions through earnings and I am happy with the action I got on it.