He's down from 364 to 260. Yeah, I'd call that a bad year. Honest? Probably, don't have the statements or real time calls to say one way or the other. Regularity? Detail? Same format maybe, chooses which trades to post, when I'd really like to see all of them. I believe there's a system known as "Brave Bear" called Main QQQQ that's always been a short system. He made money for the wrong reasons if he keeps it up with the short bias. We should have never gone down to the march low levels, and he'll keep getting crushed if he doesn't trade to the upside by year end.
Your discretionary trades are killing you. Why don't you abolish the "limited" discretionary trades for a couple weeks? You think you are making a change but you keep on conducting the same failed experiment over and over and over. Just now instead of conducting the same failed experiment daily you conduct it weekly. You use to be the best pitcher in the majors with the best curveball. This year the batters are hitting your curveball out of the park left and right and yet you still keep throwing that same curveball. To put it frankly you are stubborn as hell, you fell in love with a method and show no willingness to give it up. Pull the plug, the bitch is dead!
It is extremely difficult to make $$ longing calls or puts. I am too a cheerleader for Neke and honestly his trading style needs to be revised.
Weekly Update for week 22/50 ended 06/13/2009 Lost for words for the downturn. Down another 18.5K (7.5%). I guess I wasn't careful enough with my discretionary trades once again. The culprits were SLM on Monday, and NAV on Tuesday. On Monday shorted 20000 SLM @ 7.24 pre-market, and added more as it rose. I just noted at the time it was rising as a result of a Cramer pump the prior friday. (Used to fade those pops on Cramers Mad Money a number of years ago when the show was relatively new, and his recommendations lead to big pops in after hours. Made quite some money, but left off when he didn't appear to carry much weight anymore, no more big moves AH. So was surprised to see his call rise so much in pre-market and decided to short). Little did I realise that two analysts had joined him in upgrading the stock (collusion or coincidence?) So instead of me vs. Cramer, it was me vs. Cramer + 2 analysts. OK they won, and I was hit with a 17K loss. Tuesday, it was NAv that refused to go down after what looked like a horrible earnings forecast. Apparently the market knew much more than I did. Made up for some of the losses with my pint-sized automated alert trades. With my cut-off threshhold of 225K being hit intra-week, attention will now be focused on improving my automated alerts and trades, and gradually size up as performance dictates. Right now, I am on Level 3 with my automated trade sizing - this means for the average stock trade I would commit just 30% of my account value, which comes to just about 67K now. Compare that to some of my discretionary trades where I have committed 300% of account value intraday. Good thing I could afford to take a lot of those alerts and not be too pre-occupied with one trade going bad. Further restrictions are being placed on criteria for discretionary trades, such that if I took more than two discretionary trades a week, I must have overtraded. On second thought, I think cutting them off altogether may be harmful in the long run. Prior to this year, they have accounted for the bulk of my gains, and I believe when the time is right, things may fall into place again. Code: Opening Balance: 246,132 Net loss for the week -18,615 ------------------------------------------------ Net Balance: 227,517 Number of Trades 21 Number of Profitable Trades 11 Since Inception of Thread 01/10/2009 - 06/13/2009 Opening Balance: 320,064 Net loss (Less Margin Interest) -92,547 (Down 28.9%) ------------------------------------------------ Net Balance 227,517 Number of Trades 517 Number of Profitable Trades 322 Top/Bottom Discretionary Trades for the week TICKER ENTRY DATE/TIME EXIT DATE/TIME QTY PURCHASE AMT SOLD AMT GAIN/LOSS TYPE ---------------------------------------------------------------------- NAV 2009-06-09-09-53-56 2009-06-09-11-30-02 4000 174375 169936 -4478 SHORT SLM 2009-06-08-08-00-00 2009-06-08-15-51-12 74000 573519 556807 -16831 SHORT
Are you still trading without a news feed? Yahoo Finance does not count as a news feed. This is such a rookie error. A subscription to Briefing or any other news feed is approx $30-40 a month. Coughing up $400-500 a year to know what's going on is a must. It's neither you VS Cramer or you VS Cramer +2 analysts, it's you VS yourself and you keep sabotaging your success. I'm really pulling for you but you're not making much of an effort.
Since half the year is gone and your equity curve seems totally random are you questioning if your system or trading plan are severely flawed? Although your previous couple journals were pretty kick ass so.. Not trying to be a dick but just want to get your perspective.
I've worked with traders long enough to know a death spiral when I see one. I eyeballed your equity chart in May and figured your psychological break point is 200K. Which you are about to hit. http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=2437840#post2437840 You go lower and you'll do yourself serious psychological harm. A equity stop on the entire account is highly recommended. If you want to discuss solutions send me a pm.
Don't know much about trading, but follow your thread for at least a year. I have seen enough phony financial advisers and fund managers that I really want to see you be successful. Anyway, got to polish your weapon before going to war... So, I agree with red ink here.
Neke, you are not listening to the market; you are deciding what the market should do and refusing to believe it when it doesn't do it. I wiped out 30% of my first quarter gains in April by doing this exact same thing. Fortunately it was my GAINS I wiped out, not my core capital. If your setups are solid, the trade should go your way in very short order. If it doesn't, get out, or better yet, reverse your position. I exited several trades today at or near break even when they didn't go my way. My stops were tight, because the setups were decent and there was no reason to endure a draw down if the setup was invalidated. In fact, if I'd simply reversed my position at the point my stops were triggered, I'd have doubled my profit today!
I dont normally post in peoples journals but I just thought i would point out that it seems that the point in which you started to lose money is the same point in which the markets started to rally. Seems like you made the bulk of your money during the downtrend and since you made alot doing that, you stuck to that type of trading. Since march we have been in a rally and thats when you started losing money. So now you just gotta do the opposite of whatever you were doing...just like opposite george. <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/cKUvKE3bQlY&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/cKUvKE3bQlY&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>