Surfer's last post. He was soon buried under yet another massive ES drop. Okay Surfy, we realize you don't owe anything to an anonomous trading board. But you are the one who put it all out here for the world. You are very quick to tout your successes. So how about an update? How much did you lose? What are the trading "lessons learned" here for the newer traders. You can turn this into a positive event (well sorta) by learning and teaching... Hope you can continue trading. We all have had bad losses on occasion. Ya just gotta keep on sluggin' . Good luck to you.
These were surfs last three trades on this journal, last trade first: By my reckoning that is a loss of 30,000+19,500+15,375+commissions That is 66K of total losses.. Then there was another losing trade that some members claim he deleted from this journal very quickly. Lets estimate that one at the low end another 15K loss. So we looking at 80K in losses for trades called on this journal. Who knows how many other private trades he made while on tilt?
It doesn't seem like he is trading real money. Probably just likes the attention of the journal? If this is real money, poor guy, rough week
I couldn't sleep and my curiosity got the better side of me, so I did the accounting. For simplicity I use units to do the numbers, one unit is 6 cars, you can multiply it with 300 to get a cash value.My guesstimate after seeing these 3-4 recent losses was that Surf got back into the red again. ...and then a strange thing happened. Unless my 3rd grade education level and my calculator are both wrong, the Journal is still in the GREEN!!! The last 3 posted losses were -50,-65 and -100 pts per unit and adding the deleted -80 loser that makes a decent -295 pts loss per unit. But what people don't realize is that the journal was up +375 pts (take my word or do the math)until the losses started, so that would still leave Surf up +80 pts per unit, or 24K in dollars. And you can buy 3 Madoff buoys with that. So why would Surf go so quiet suddenly? Sure the recent losses were big, sure there was one most likely deleted trade, but the P/L is STILL positive!!! Could it be that since we are not talking about real money, he didn't realize that he was still in the green? After all he did say that it is a long term run and the P/L fluctuated before. Then the only thing what suffered much was his PRIDE. Or did he take other non-posted trades and they were losers too? I can only account for what I see.... And since we are here again at my non-salaried position as his accountant, who the hell would let another poster do the P/L for his journal? All it takes to look at his screen and update us occasionally.... The only reason I started to do the math from the beginning because I knew from Part 1 that this is the only way he can be held accountable. So don't you cry Surf, you are still up in your most likely paper trading and it is still the most entertaining read on ET!!!! And Annaland probably still loves you..... P.S.: I kind of liked the "we have been notified to close" expression earlier, because that indicates that Surf is using someone else's ideas....
Well, I wish him well despite his cheating/lack of transparency. I wish he'd just taken profit and been flat for the night shortly after he deleted that post. BTW, he the one he deleted wasn't an extra trade, it was just worse timing than the later one he posted (entry was higher, stop was lower).
What is the commission total for the journal? the last three/four trades was almost $500 if he was paying $4 bucks per round turn.. and that was just one day! I dont know how many trades he has done over the journal or what his average lot size has been.. but a good chunk (or even all) of that 24K could be gone in commissions.
Based on this pattern of trading (trying to catch a falling knife) i would say there was a good chance that he pulled some of these stops or didnt even put them in. If i recall correctly he never confirmed he had closed out his final trade. He could effectively have been adding to a losing position (or just riding one long position down all the way) and probably puked up at the lows when ES was below 1100. The losses would be catastrophic if this was the case and explain his silence now.
I am just guesstimating here, but probably less than 2K counting $25 per unit per return. You have to remember that in the beginning he was using only 1 unit for 4 months or so and usually he keeps a position for days if not for weeks. So until the last 2 weeks commissions didn't really add up. In swing trading as long as the trades are not getting more and more frequent, commissions don't eat up the profits....
So he was swing trading nicely for many months in rising market and making a good profit, but then he gets blown up by a quick but large down move in the markets? I know marketsurfer was trading futures and not options, but he seems to have blown up in similar manner to the way his idol Victor Niederhoffer did in the past.