Just wondering if you can give us some performance numbers from before the market went straight up. You are aggressively stating that you are better than almost everyone here, but you have to prove that you are not a case of confusing brains with a bull market to be taken seriously.
A relatively uninspiring 25%. Then again that is better than 2008 which was a relatively inspiring: 0%.
someone over at Transtrend's offices disagrees with you. 20% a year with WORST DRAWDOWNS of 7-8%. So the most they lost from peak to relative low of their equity curve was 8%...which is very low it would be the same the S&P averaging 2x's as much in long term and it's Bear markets only with declines of 8% maximum. By the way the results are for 15 year trading record
i counted my chickens way too early: finished 2009 ~+20%. not sure if anybody can learn from my mistakes, but at least i hope i will so i am typing this up. i had two trades that started as purely intraday plays but went against me. in both cases i added to losers "to save the trade" even though there were not signals to do so (just the opposite). not only i went against my own entry/exit rules, i also exceeded my max position size on those trades. in the end, what started as intraday trades became multi-day ordeal of trying to trade out of the overleveraged positions. what's interesting is that at the time i was very much preoccupied with family matters and that may have clouded my judgment. my lessons: 1. review (and backtest) my own trading rules periodically to reinforce the compliance 2. follow the rules 3. eliminate "shoot from the hip" trading when under stress (ideally, eliminate/reduce when not under stress as well) i often run into problems with 2. because i know that the rules i have are far from perfect so i am tempted to override them once in a while. what i need nail into my head is that while overrides are justifiable in some well reasoned cases, deciding to override a rule under time pressure is plain wrong.
Started off slow at the beginning but picked up in March. I normally don't buy stocks under 5 dollars, but I made an exception on one Bank stock, buying it at 4.53 and selling it months later at 14.69. Bought back in the day of the stress test results at 10.55 and sold at 17.53. My strategy is basically buying and selling a small handfull of companies I'm comfortable with holding if they don't go up or down if i'm shorting immediately. I look for small gains of 2-5% and then move on to my next play. This one move on the bank stock enabled me to have my best year and make almost 800% on my portfolio, so I had a great year. I'm even this year as I haven't touched my account after going through a divorce, I didn't want to make any mistakes so I've been waiting til my mind can handle it again. Starting to papertrade again so I can be ready when I begin building my account again.