I've been lurking on this forum for some time and have decided to start a thread describing various aspects of life as a remote trader (slacker). If you want to hone your trading skills (big drawdown), this is not the place - there are many fine threads here on ET for that purpose. If, however, you seek some relief from the stresses of the trading day, then drop by and learn how I prepare myself for daily battle (plug in Linksys router), get details of some trades with commentary and, if I'm still conscious, be rewarded with a hard-hitting postmortem afterwards (fist through monitor). The emphasis will be on honesty, with my inner thoughts expressed in parenthesized red - my style, for those that remember, is based on Kevin Nealon's Saturday Night Live character "Mr Subliminal". I have paid my learning dues (Ferrari, Xanax 1mg) and my trading is now on a new level (slow bleeding, Xanax 0.25mg). Well, enough about me - I'm sure you'll get to know me better with time (www.amw.com). Oh, and if the color red is too harsh on the eyes, let me know.
Monday mornings are always the hardest as I barely pull myself out of bed (restraints). Then it's a cup of hot instant coffee as I scan a pile of newspapers, sadly most of them from last week. The sound of a hysterical 14 year old, whose voice is breaking, jolts me from my semi-comatose state, and I look up to see Jim Cramer on CNBC. All the futures are up so I mentally rehearse my Island buy on bid hotkeys and my flash size routine ((1) 5000 shares, 3 full points below inside bid; (2) cancel; (3) go to (1)), the latter to be used once I've fully scaled into my position (400 shares). The coffee is starting to kick in as I stagger over to my work area (terrace), flick the switch on the old Compaq Presario and Linksys BEFSR41, fire up my DAT s/w (Watcher clone), graphics (NexTrend) and news service (Yahoo!Finance), calibrate my mounted telescope pointing at the apartment opposite (midday doldrums), and await the opening of the games.
Not a bad morning with my stocks in the software sector showing strength. Two quick trades in SEBL and my P&L is now two digits, an admirable feat yet clearly no threat of numeric overflow to the software designers. Obviously the areas I need to work on are holding on and size (Dr. Ruth). As I talk I ruefully glance at the 40 cent move I missed in PSFT. Fitz, you ask about the telescope. There's still plenty to keep me occupied. Larry Glasscock, CEO of Anthem (ATH) was just on CNBC discussing the proposed bid for Trigon Healthcare. I have a strong feeling he won't be changing the name of the merged entity.
Thank you, AAA. As a rule, I will not divulge my daily P&L - suffice it to say that I'm satisfied with today's performance both from a financial (dug myself out of a two-digit hole) and discipline (no margin calls or broken equipment) viewpoint. I religiously update my trading log daily and append a JPG as proof. Finally, before I go out clubbing (www.dcdancenet.com/wheretodance/) till the wee hours of the morning, I shall leave you with some statistics I took off my broker's website - draw your own conclusions. Where data seems incomplete, that's because it is. This includes about 8 offices and remote traders. Code: Positive Active % Positive Traders Traders January 99 257 384 67 February 99 178 411 43 March 99 241 473 51 April 99 313 466 67 May 99 248 520 48 June 99 246 569 43 July 99 189 574 33 August 99 279 585 48 September 99 258 591 44 October 99 301 583 52 November 99 409 591 69 December 99 445 597 74 1999 Total 457 825 55 January 00 411 594 69 February 00 477 630 76 March 00 472 674 70 April 00 476 681 70 May 00 412 690 60 June 00 383 723 53 July 00 342 709 48 August 00 352 696 51 September 00 304 723 42 October 00 425 737 58 November 00 362 729 50 December 00 382 711 54 January 01 382 691 47 February 01 270 689 39 March 01 266 688 33 April 01 341 657 52 May 01 261 636 41 June 01 286 585 49 July 01 196 559 35 March 02 186 430 43 Me and my trading log :
I post this non CNBC commercial here - one of the best I've seen - www.looniebin-of-jokes.com/video/elephant.mpg
Got whipsawed a couple of times before the economic numbers came out, which also caught me off guard. I remembered they were due out before I went to sleep and also saw them mentioned on Toni's post (Brandon's thread) this morning at about 8:30am, yet I still managed to forget in the short time that elapsed (THC). This is one of the disadvantages of not trading in an office environment, though I doubt this would have happened to a serious remote trader. When I'm not trading, sleeping or reading, I spend most of my spare time developing scanning software (cassette basic) I have written using my own proprietary setups. It's still in the debugging stage, but I'm especially excited about Anorexic Goatherder and Bespectacled Scarecrow, long and short setups (random entry) respectively. Once completed, I have no doubt that this will afford me a significant advantage over my current scanning method (mounted telescope).