Amen. I have the utmost respect for anyone who puts real money on the line like neke does. Only they know the pain you feel in the pit of your stomach when the numbers to the right of the (-) minus sign represent real money. Anyone posting 'results' from Collective2 as proof of thier prading prowess is a joker.
I personally believe that excluding high frequency trading, if you were a retail investor paying retail rates, the highest consistent return that you can hope to achieve without say a greater than 50% drawdown is 100% per year. Can someone prove me wrong? this is important...if we know the highest potential return, we can decide what not to trade which is as important as what to trade.
So SLG, you're now down to 15.30 after I got out? Had I exercised the puts, my account should be higher by 223K! Thanks for teaching me.
You picked a top and got burned. Timing individual stocks like these is problematic and especially risky with your trading size. Why not stick to index and commodity futures? The movements on the index futures are much more predictable due to the higher liquidity.
Neke that's a bitch with what happened to SLG today. Calculating todays potential gain is bad , but I know it's hard to avoid. Remember what is always written about golfers that what separates the good from the bad is how they behave when things go wrong. You're still up huge from last year, keep that in your mind as opposed to dwelling on SLG.
Top 3 Rules of Trading: 1. Cut losses quickly 2. Let profits run 3. If you neglect to honor Rule #1, and take big loss, immediately remove chart of loser from view
Weekly Update for week 15/50 ended 04/25/2009 Moderately positive week, up 6K (2%). Dug a deep hole for myself on Monday, and spent the rest of the week climbing back to positive. It appears to be my last desperate act of averaging down before I put in the automatic closure on Tuesday: Bought 10000 LVS @ 5.28 Monday morning after the positive analyst note, averaged in further quantities as the share price and the market went down until I had 80000 shares to my credit. Capitulated at 4.62, losing 26K. Hurts to see the stock close Fri at 7.42! My automated checks came in place Tuesday, and glad to say I haven't averaged down (one forced closure) since then. Had a nice stream of singles for the rest of the week on reduced leverage, netting 6K at the end. My work is still cut out for me as I try to: --come to break-even --build up a buffer --accelerate the return through incremental leverage based on buffer Code: Opening Balance: 302,120 Net gain for the week 6,054 ------------------------------------------------ Net Balance: 308,174 Number of Trades 35 Number of Profitable Trades 23 Since Inception of Thread 01/10/2009 - 04/25/2009 Opening Balance: 320,064 Net gain (Less Margin Interest) -11,890 (Down 3.7%) ------------------------------------------------ Net Balance 308,174 Number of Trades 367 Number of Profitable Trades 232 Top/Bottom Discretionary Trades for the week TICKER ENTRY DATE/TIME EXIT DATE/TIME QTY PURCHASE AMT SOLD AMT GAIN/LOSS TYPE JUXQQ 2009-04-24-09-41-56 2009-04-24-09-56-37 40000 48000 60000 11385 JNPR PUT ----------------------------------------------------- LVS 2009-04-20-09-22-17 2009-04-21-11-31-11 80000 395572 369625 -26035 LONG
Neke, happy to see you have a positive week! Keep your sights on the singles, and the home runs will come.