Neke, Remember 4 Great trades a month better than all the back an forth crap. An equity graph with flat steps is ok..
Four trades a month? Well if I were holding for two weeks to a month at a time, yes. But with an average of 1-day holding period, I would rather be looking for 40 great trades a month. Granted, one could have a great month with four REALLY GREAT trades, but I would rather hit the singles and doubles, and hope the GREAT trades show up once a while (the type that shoots up the account 20% or more).
Neke, You see my journal is filled with 1 day trades also.. hard to do 4 trades a month.. even for a swinger.. Let me rephrase.. "minimize" trades to the best only AND let them give you all they will.. I forgot you are not a swing trader..
Weekly Update for week 5 ended 02/16/2008 Another OK week, up 6.9K (6.9%). No major moves, except the ones I did not take. It feels awful seeing a stock trade at, say 100, you put in a limit to buy at 90, and walk away. It touches 90.50, before zooming up to close the day at 110. I still have a lot to work on regarding sticking to rules. There are just too many cases I have passed on a trade because the signals are not strong enough, only to see it go precipitously in the direction I would have taken and then feeling left out jumping in immediately at very much inferior prices (leaving myself vulnerable to sharp reversals and being stopped out). That has got to stop: I shall see how I can get my position monitor to detect and close those kinds of trades. I have avoided a lot of high reward/high risk trades, because I did not want to risk my account going much below six digits. Hopefully, as I create enough buffer above $100K, I shall once again be bold enough to take on those kinds of carefully planned trades that have the potential to accelerate the upward move. Code: Balance B/F: 99,984 Net Gain for the week 6,932 ------------------------------------------------ Balance C/F: 106,916 Number of Trades 19 Number of Profitable Trades 11 Since Inception of Thread 01/13/2008 - 02/09/2008 Balance B/F: 102,615 Net Gain (Less Margin Interest) 4,301 ------------------------------------------------ Balance C/F: 106,916 (Up 4.2%) Number of Trades 76 Number of Profitable Trades 45 Expected Balance at this time to be on track for Year-End Target : 131,226 Status: Behind Target (Based on adjusted balance before withdrawals) Top/Bottom Discretionary Trades for the week TICKER ENTRY DATE/TIME EXIT DATE/TIME QTY PURCHASE AMT SOLD AMT GAINS/LOSS TYPE STP 2008-02-12-09-48-20 2008-02-12-12-44-53 1800 88031 92700 4638 SHORT FSLR 2008-02-13-10-21-42 2008-02-13-11-42-08 500 107314 111196 3860 LONG -------------------------------------------------------------- ARRS 2008-02-15-09-36-24 2008-02-15-09-50-47 5000 28500 25450 -3070 SHORT NURO 2008-02-11-09-36-26 2008-02-11-16-27-00 6300 50295 46756 -3579 LONG
Yes there are. You may take a trade that could go 2% for you or 1% against you with equal chance. That is low reward/low risk. On the other hand if it could go 20% for you or 10% against with similar probability, that is high reward/high risk
yeah but it is the same risk/reward...just bigger numbers. and i don't trade in percentages...only points and dollars.
Out of curiosity, I checked the execution on ARRS on friday. This was the stock I skipped when I considered shorting after hours the prior night @ 6.20, yet rushed to short at 5.09 after the market opened. Wrong move. My position monitor covered the 5000 shares at 09:50:47 at market. I took a look at my log file, where the execution prices are updated every minute, the price before my order was 5.56, and the price the next minute was 5.59, after my order has executed. My execution price was 5.70. Is it reasonable to suffer 2% slippage on a stock whose volume at the time was 9million shares traded, on only 5000 share market order? I shall raise this up with Ameritrade, but if this is systematic, I shall take a second look at stop market orders.