Hey Neke, Contrary to what you and most people on here believe I think you should continue your discretionary trading. At the beginning of last year you were thinking about fully automating your trading, but that went by the wayside as your discretionary trades started doing better. At another point in time you were considering cutting out options from your trading because they had been consistently losing you money. Shortly after that they were the only type of trade making you money. I think you have a lot of different strategies and trading methods: your ability to switch toward the successful strategy of the moment has resulted in a lot of gains for you. Automated trading though, has never been a big part of your strategy. I do think you have used your efforts to automate to help inform your discretionary trading but it has not been one of your main investment vehicles. I believe the reason for this is how aggressive your investment strategy has been. In my opinion that aggressiveness is the reason you have been so successful and why you see a lot of jealous posts on here. I think the question of whether to continue is the same as it has always been. Do you have an edge? If you believe so then continue discretionary trading. You can expect an outlier event over a long period of time and at your risk level I'm not even sure if this qualifies. Possibly the reason you are considering significantly reducing your risk level is outside factors are affecting your investment decisions. In the beginning you started out with nothing to lose. Nothing has really changed, you've already made money even if you lose your current account. Of course there is a lot more money at stake now. The question is, are you willing to risk it all as you were in previous years? If not then you have to completely reevaluate your investment goals. If it is then you have to convince yourself it is play money and focus on strategy not results.
If by discretionary trading you mean shorting "overextended" stocks like FSLR and CME, then yes by all means extract this way of thinking from your brain. Sometimes there is a very subtle difference between what to do vs what not to do, here you are just completely off track.
A trader must "learn to love his/her lossess" for what they have to teach them. You took your account from 320K < a quarter of a millon dollars in a period of less than 5 months. It's up to you to learn the lesson(s) hidden in your losses, stem the tide, and reverse the trend (shown by Compulsive's hilarious - though accurate, chart) and continue working towards your goals (with what is, by any measurement, an extremely well-funded trading account). We're all rooting for your to win Neke, even the naysayers. They are just taking the opposite side of the bet in case their feelings are wrong (if nobody cared, they wouldn't post).
Neke Averaging down is another form of revenge trading. when successful ,....and it is at times,it plants the seeds of future failure in YOUR trading. As red ink suggests you must have a exit plan. Your w/l average will suffer but i'll bet your p/l will start moving in the right direction cheers john
He's still got a quarter mil. I think he's got the capacity to turn it around. Just needs to stay away from the SPY calls until he learns that the market makers controll the futures and all prices you buy on ETF's and index investments.
Who cares? Fuck them. It's a public board, and Neke has choosen to post his trading progress in public (for reasons known only to him) so he is going to get commentary, both good and bad, depending on how his weekly performance goes (same as with a public company and a board of directors). Say what you have to say and be done with it.
Weekly Update for week 20/50 ended 05/30/2009 A nice week, up 21K (8.8%). A much welcome relief from the recent battering. Finally got it right on CME on Wednesday, shorting at about 308 and covering at 299 before end of day. The prior day, Tues, wasted an opportunity to make money on FSLR put, as I got out just before it accelerated its decline. The emphasis has been extreme selectivity in what I trade - made only 10 trades, including the semi-automated ones. I hope to continue this cautionary phase as I seek to rebuild. Code: Opening Balance: 240,682 Net gain for the week 20,517 ------------------------------------------------ Net Balance: 261,199 Number of Trades 10 Number of Profitable Trades 6 Since Inception of Thread 01/10/2009 - 05/30/2009 Opening Balance: 320,064 Net loss (Less Margin Interest) -58,856 (Down 18.4%) ------------------------------------------------ Net Balance 261,199 Number of Trades 474 Number of Profitable Trades 298 Top/Bottom Discretionary Trades for the week TICKER ENTRY DATE/TIME EXIT DATE/TIME QTY PURCHASE AMT SOLD AMT GAIN/LOSS TYPE CME 2009-05-27-10-43-20 2009-05-27-15-33-03 1583 475067 488080 12965 SHORT EXEL 2009-05-28-09-14-47 2009-05-28-12-05-09 60000 332566 341457 8806 SHORT ------------------------------------------------------ HJQRP 2009-05-26-09-57-34 2009-05-26-11-55-21 5000 62500 58000 -4591 FSLR PUT