Looking at their stockcharts, PVH and ADSK both look like they can still run a bit on the upside. Would not be surprised if both run strongly, to the upside from here.
Following your posts, it makes me wonder a few things: First of all, your best feature is the consistency. We saw people made huge yet erratic gains over a short period of time, only to lost all of them and even more sooner than normal. You keep a very cool head adjusting your gains and risks and balanced all of them well to keep your profitability going and going. Second, the way you trade, it is almost looks like, in an analogy, you are wining the battles or eventually even the war simply using a rifle against your rivals that have missiles, tanks and aircraft. YOu can simply trade on your smart phone (though you probably need to do research and analyse the charts on a computer). I wonder if Goldman Sachs and Jim Simon would fire those a couple hundred Ph.D. in computer, physics and math, and tear down all the complicated and most advanced IT support notwork that spend millions to maintain, after they witness your journal (of course they don't care and don't think they would browse ET forum). I read and heard about Richard Dennis made 200M from 400, Tom Baldwin made 2B from 25000, Ed Seykota made 15M from 5000, and now you are providing a live example towards that journey. I only hope that you will maintain your journals for a longer period (say, two years), so the naysayers have nothing to whine about. Cheers!
I had PVH setting up for a breakout above $163 after this shallow base on base pattern. It also has fundamental support for the shares after a strong report just days ago. For ADSK, the guidance came in weaker. I figured investors would look elsewhere to put their money. It looked like the shares were going in my direction, but the tech tide that started last Friday keeps pulling ADSK higher. It doesn't look good for ADSK puts right now, but shares couldn't hold $137.5 so I've got that going for this position. This trade will just have to be a lesson learned going forward where puts in a bull market don't hit their downside targets and I'll have to shorten my target. As for my account, I am trying to wind down for the Summer and not over trade. The phrase "sell in May and go away" isn't just talked about on every business tv show. It's an occurrence that can kill any momentum that you've got going. I also liked one of the comments from another thread I saw, and that is risk management. What ever your risk management is, be consistent. And have a plan B in case you scrap plan A. I scrap my plan A risk management a lot, so I know there are traders out there that might do the same. In terms of option trading, my plan B is that my initial risk will be my total risk if I need it to be. I usually enter a trade with a 50% stop loss, but at times I can be so shocked on a price move against and remove the stop loss without having a backup plan. Second, admit defeat when the market has you cornered. I will flip on a stock if the momentum in the other direction is strong (by that I just mean simple price move with volume confirmation). I've done that to NFLX and NVDA many times. I know that all I need is to be 60% correct and I'll be fine. All this may not fit your risk management, but being consistent is key. Another phrase I like is "don't bite more than you can chew". I saw some beautiful entry points over the past 2 days, but have not made a move. Just 2 examples are SHOP and GRUB. And these are two that I am familiar with already. I took losses in both a couple of weeks ago trying to hit their earnings move. I know that there earning reports were very strong, but in a correction they both suffered and I took losses. In fact, I even missed the bottom on both, but that doesn't mean their move were done. SHOP broke out yesterday in what looks like a nice cup with handle base with volume above it's 20-day avg. That's confirmation to me, and then adds more to it today. Still, I know I'm too heavy in the market and it's best to adjust my current positions before adding new ones. The young inexperienced me would have jumped right into that trade too. Best of luck to the rest of you, and I hope everyone's making money in this current rally.
OI, "I am really happy your making your goals. Tremendous job!" I am thinking the market might take a pause at around SPX 2,800 (the March 2018 high). Any thoughts on that? Also, do you think oil is just pulling back to support at this point?
Hey Jeff, Yes, that 2800 level for the SP500 is going to be the level to look at this Summer. I'm sure every trader on here figures that the odds are we fail at that 2800. I believe we will fail too at the first test, but we're not falling back below 2700. In fact, 2720-2740 would be my support level, although I don't think we fall that low too. Any drop will probably coincide with tariff news picking. Clearly, there's retaliation tariffs from Mexico already, and EU and Canada are going follow suit soon. Still, you can't just take this theory and throw all the other ones out. The other option I see occurring would have the SP500 just break through 2800 without looking back. That tells me momentum is strong, and you've seen me trade these momentum moves higher into bigger profits. All I'm saying is be ready to adapt to change. As for oil, it's an uptrend and opportunities like this should be buying points. That's actually a beautiful chart too with clean support at its 100-day ma. The only thing else I would mention is that oil tend to have a cyclical chart. From February to June, there tends to always be an uptrend. Then you reach the height around July and oil prices fall back a bit until late December where it finds a bottom before the cycle repeats. Now, within this repeating cycle, I'd expect more of a higher high this Summer, and then higher low in the winter before bouncing back to another higher high next May/June. I think we're leading towards a recession (3-4 years out) with oil prices picking up, interest rate rising, and I've read of housing markets in certain area very hot right now. Don't expect some big great depression, but an overall pullback should be expected. Like I say, history repeats itself.
I was heavy in tech, and today's sell off in the nasdaq has practically put me back to yesterday morning's levels. There was a thread on home run trades, and now I've got an itch for it. I used to have a system aiming at home run trades only. I'm testing this on FIVE Jun week 2 $105 calls today. I just have $80 worth of the calls so nothing big, but now I want to see how this plays out by tomorrow afternoon. I should note that for home run trades, I want to see stocks that just reported earnings and momentum is strong (where the stock is showing a big gap move).
"Thank you for the nice detailed reply, I wish that I had even half your knowledge." I noticed you mentioned Home Run trades. It seems like most of your trades are Home Run trades! When I was beginning option trading in the 1990's I had a subscription to one of the market Guru's services called "Home Run Hitter." (subscription cost: $2,000 per year). He considered +100% to +300% winners a Home Run. I did it for a couple of years. His Win/Loss record in those couple of years was W/L: 40%. That would have been ok if the losers were cut short but he didn't use Stops, and many trades would lose -100%. Overall for the couple of years I subscribed it was a Net Loss. However looking back on those trades, if I would used a -50% Stop, the 2 years would have been a Net Gain.
I'm looking for 1000% to be considered home run trades. I feel like it needs to be closer to 1000% to be considered a home run. There was a thread on here talking about home runs and I used to try and trade these home runs too. But this market doesn't look good at all here. I know the DOW leading the market is never a sure thing. I took out most of the PVH calls today, leaving 2 to see how it plays out into expiration. As for the big positions, I'm just going to ride it out. So far it looks just like a blip on the chart. If I remember correctly, some of the LULU calls last Friday were home run trades too. On a percentage base, those FIVE Jun week 2 95 calls are showing +2900%. I think I should look more at stocks that are about to show some kind of gap higher following earnings. It's just I saw the LULU 115 calls that were expiring last week show 700% and that was post earnings.
I failed miserably testing out tiny positions in home run trade situations. Bought FIVE Jun 8 $105 calls and TSLA Jun 8 $330 calls that expired worthless. Overall, I also closed out 3/4 my PVH Jun 160 calls for a total net gain this week of +1724. With the wild swing in techs, I got to see it first hand watching my account reach $120K only to fall back to $114.6K over the past 2 days as tech suffered more than the other indices. I'm still holding the same positions, and added 2 more home run type trades using less than .5% of the account. I bought DOCU Jun 15 60 call and THO Jun 15 105 calls with both entries right around $1 for a total of $500 for both. I'm not adding heavy positions are looking to run momentum during this period of the year, so I'll test these out and see how they play out.
Sample size too small. Like venture investing, you need a large enough population to test out the extension of your trading methodology. From my observation your method should work in "home run" situation .