Allow me to introduce myself. I will be graduating from The University of Arizona this semester and have an incredible passion for investing. I have been investing for the past two years with moderate success. Recently I started a mock portfolio for a competition in my Investments Club. I have been running it since 10/26/2008. I started the portfolio with $1,000,000 and am currently at $1,189,957. Under the website I use, no position can exceed 20% of my entire portfolio. My hope in creating this thread is that by recording my trades and ideas, I will continue to develop my portfolio management skills, increase my mental discipline, and take responsibility for my actions. I will post screen shots of all pertinent information to ensure authenticity. All constructive comments/suggestions are welcome.
Here is a document of all the transactions I have made so far. I will continue to update as often as possible (hopefully after every trading day).
This coming week I will be looking to trade the SSO and SDS, depending on what the trends seem to be. Tomorrow I will be researching the GLD. It seems to have broke out and maybe be gaining momentum. I will chronicle my research findings on here tomorrow.
Looking at the 3-month chart of the GLD, it appears that support is right around 70, with resistance right about 90. While looking at the YTD chart, the ETF has been making lower highs and lower lows, I believe the GLD does have the ability to go much higher from here. From what I have been reading, people have been hoarding gold and that there has been massive de-leveraging by hedge funds ....here is a link to my source, the transcript of NBR last Friday http://www.pbs.org/nbr/site/onair/transcripts/081121e/ Tonight I am going to place an order to buy 1500 shares of the GLD at the market open and place a stop at 69.75, below resistance. This will give me a wide range for this trade to work out. 1500 shares will be roughly 10% of my portfolio, so if the trade does not work out right away, I have the ability to average down in my cost basis. YTD the GLD is down around 5% while the S&P is down over 40%. This position will also act as a hedge as I believe we will hit lower lows. My position in SDS should more than off-set the losses that can occur in the GLD.
Beginning Balance: $1,189,957 Ending Balance: $1,160,861 Lost nearly $30k, not very good. Lesson learned: holding positions over the weekend in a volatile market is not a good idea, especially if they are leveraged, ie SSO. Oh well, still 1st place in my Investment's Club competition..... Attached is the summary of today's transactions. 1500 shares of the GLD were automatically bought at the open @80.45. The GLD ended the day 80.91. I woke up today, saw the rally, and immediately sold all of my SDS and covered GS at $57.14. Glad I covered GS since it ended the day around $67. That would have turned the trade into a loss if I did notsold it. Around 3pm I covered my position in BPT when my stop loss hit 74. Fortunate that I locked in my gains, unfortunate that it topped out at 74.45 and then ended the day around 72. Oh well. Late in the day I saw the market start rallying. At 3:08 I bought 5000 of SSO at $23.74 and sold at $24.22 to lock in my gain. Made $2200 on that trade. With the volatility so high, I am very hesitant in holding the SSO and SDS overnight. Not closing my position on SDS last Friday cause me to turn a 10% gain into a decent size loss. Tomorrow's market conditions will dictate what I do.
I like the journal. Its good to admit quickly when you're wrong and close before loss runs away from you. Smart. Question: why are your commissions so high?
I'm using the site updown.com and they have commissions set at $100/trade. $100 isn't so bad considering I am trading $100k at least at a time, but yes, it is still high. Thanks for the words of encouragement. I appreciate it.
Attached are today's transactions and ending portfolio value. Wasn't that good of a day. I didn't really have a plan going into the day. Plus, I have classes all day on Tuesdays and Thursdays so usually those days I am not very active. In one of my classes I was watching the Dow and it appeared to me around 3pm we were breaking out into a rally. I bought the SSO at 24.50, but the rally didn't seem to shake out, so I sold out at 23.98. Also, if you notice on the attachment, I put in a limit order to buy FCX at 22.35, which was just a little bit above the resistance for the day. FCX did break out, but my order was not placed. I am very confused to why this happened since FCX ended at $23.06, but was down a little bit after hours. I think I will contact UpDown to inquire about this..... Tomorrow I will be working and then driving up to Phoenix for the rest of the week. I probably won't be very active the rest of the week, but I will spend some time looking at some charts and maybe placing some limit orders tonite. I'm not sure if its a real good idea though since I will not be around a computer this week. I am trying to treat this like a real money account and in the environment we appear to be in, it is too risky holding positions when you are unable to pay attention to them. Side Note: appears that the market wants to go higher. We've had 3 up days in a row. I might get my feet wet again with the SSO, but that really all depends on what happens at the open tomorrow. Oh well, not that good of a day, but I am still #1 in the competition and up over $139k on 2nd place. Not bad....