Here is IDT. Would expect better price action considering the high volume, got out. Also didn't like the gap up on Monday morning on SPY, suggesting that public is in FOMO mode. http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=IDT&p=W&yr=1&mn=0&dy=0&id=p39897817268 Only current positions are TRT and COWN. Trash can rise to the top in choppy markets. Was looking at COWN's results, the prop capital part of COWN has earned 17% returns over last 15 years with little in the way of drawdowns. That's pretty impressive, none of the other small banks have anything like that. No reason for COWN to trade at 66% of tangible book with that return.
This is a funny ad. http://www.ramiusreplication.com/content/ramius-dynamic-replication-fund/overview.asp "Therefore, in many fund of hedge funds, the weight of both beta components increases whereas the alpha diminishes. We believe the beta and timing parts of a portfolioâs returns can be replicated using liquid market instruments (such as futures and ETFs)." In other words, they'll sell you the market return without the alpha. Genius.
Did I really say I sold IDT? The pain. IN fact my mistake wasn't selling IDT, it was not getting back into the stock the next day. Here's what I must repeat to myself: Opportunity losses are not real losses, and there will always be more opportunities. But this was another case where I should have admitted I made a mistake and simply turned around and changed my position. If you're driving a car, there are only a few choices to make - right or left, faster or slower. If your trading account came with a preset and limited number of choices, most people would do much better. I've done a much better job of limiting losses and reducing my choices, but I'm thinking of prohibiting myself from making any decisions during the trading session, or simply setting preset buy and sell orders and leaving it at that (actually I did that before and found it to be effective, but boring). Precommitment is a powerful tool against unplanned trades.
Yeah, I share same feelings but different instrument right now - AUDUSD Painfully watching drop after getting clear signal & 2x f*ckups i dont want to talk about, as it is too embarassing, just before drop started. To my defence, soros hired best MM's for the job of dropping AUD. Stock rises will continue in my opinion until further notice.
Thought I would put this thread out of its misery by posting some stats on performance during the period of the journal, and then close it up. The journal started on October 13 2012, but that was a weekend, so performance results are from October 12 to July 12. The total period is nine months. Beginning with a hypothetical $100,000, total return, net of fees but before taxes, was 36%. Profits were $61,000 and losses $25,000, for a 2.5 profit factor. Profit factor would have been 6.1 without the largest loss. Winning percentage was 58%, 78% if we ignore scratches (see below). I don't want to go through every trade, because I would add and subtract from positions. IB does list every stock traded and the results, so I will track it by stock. Out of the 36 total stock positions, measuring from the first day of the journal, there were: 21 winners 15 losers Distribution of winners and losers (% of starting account value): -15%: 1 (BTH) -3%: 1 (LPR) -1%: 4 Scratch losers (between -.1% and 0): 9 Scratch winners (between 0 and .1%):3 1%:10 1% - 15%:8 As you can see, I am a "trader" who doesn't trade very often. What really sticks out to me is how much I was hurt by the large loss. Results would have been over 50% without the large loss, which was chronicled at the beginning of the journal and the result of ignoring rules. This is a very profitable market for a long-only position trader. The IWM generated a 18% return during the same period, so my return beat the index by 18%, not really worth the effort, to be honest. Part of the explanation for that is that I've been only half invested for the last few months, but that's the advantage of being in an index. One conclusion I've drawn, looking at this, is that I need to be more fully invested and then let stops work for me. My winning percentage and profit factor are encouraging, I just need to let them work for me more. There were a number of stocks (DK, IDT, NTWK) that I closed out before the big run and before the stop triggered. ART, MBND, IDT and IL and COWN were among the big winners, all but IL were mentioned on the journal.