Weinstein Trading and Fading

If you count the first thread that this one continued from I was up about 40K in 2008 which is when I went full time and a little over 16K last year which was my first full year of only trading for income

The first half of last year was good and after HAR (-110K+) in July I really had a hard time getting my calibration back. I think perhaps that is a drawback to working in an office by yourself all day without anyone there to "hit you over the head" and tell you to leave so you don't do any more damage. I am now finding that my confidence level is getting back but still have a ways to go.

Best to you

Robert

 

One nice trade today

MNTA gave me a B8 short and I added a few extra shares to the trade without getting overboard. Most of the shares where added right near the entry level price and the price did travel up a ways before coming back. I had more than one chance to add just above my current cost basis but passed as I wanted to add at a price closer to the high which it never approached again. It was a sub $20 stock so my target is lower but with this one I could have taken full target as it really fell back a ways. MNTA + 539

MEE started out alright but I stuck my hand in the cookie jar once too many and gave back my gains and then some more by the end of the day. Sometimes being greedy is the best course of action and sometimes it just doesn’t work out well. I could have traded this one much better even if the final results would have been the same MEE -41

Death by a thousand cuts with RTN I was up then down then up and down. It chopped around my entry point and the only one that made any real money was the broker. In the end it did finally break down a little bit but not much
RTN-56
TRGL was an end of the day short that at one time was maybe going to go overbought but never made it. Near the end of the day I received a 60,30 and 10 min WW short so I entered and put a very tight stop on it(about 5 cents). I thought there was a chance that it could really break down in the last 10 or so minutes of trading but it just floated around the 13 price round number. With less that 90 seconds to go and the price floating near my basis I put in a limit just under the basis thinking it would most likely get hit as it was above the round 13 point. It did with about < 30 seconds to go. +4

+ 446 Day
- 2124 Month

 

Hi Robert

Ever thought of your max loss for the day? Mine is $1000. But I make more than that on most days so even if I have a couple of bad days it s still is ok for me. What really used to kill me earlier was when my avg day used to be about $500 and my loss for the day would be between $700 to 3000 , with typical day being about $1200. The bad thing about really bad days is not only the financial hit but also the BIG emotional hit you take. The financial hit is easy to come out of but the emotional one takes longer. By keeping below average loss days it doesnt affect me at all now. Sometimes I watch markets after I am done for the day and of course there are entries that I see that would ve worked but thats probably cause I am removed from it emotionally again.

But main thing is it doesnt affect my trading the next day.

 

I think a max-loss could help but it also might significantly limit the opportunities taken.

I think Robert trades solely on a set of signals he has developed - so it might make sense to set a threshold in terms of P/L or perhaps timeframe, which may be different for different signals, beyond which it is acknowledged that a signal has failed for that particular stock and time. When a signal has failed, you get out. Occasional bad calls are a part of trading for even the best traders (and I think Robert is a very good Trader).

Since he makes money very regularly. it'd be great to see some rigorous analysis of the past trades looking at:
- time of day
- volatility
- overall market movement
- the max negative P/L during the day on winners <-- might help in setting failure thresholds
- Fama French factors

 

I'm not sure, but I think one of more of his stategies requires that he holds a monstrous amount of shares overnight. Which means when he gets to the office, sometimes there will be a gigantic loss waiting for him to deal with. I don't know how he could use a max daily loss under those circumstances. Maybe he could drop all the strats, save the ones that are flat by 4:00pm EST?

 

To me one of the best privileges of daytrading is you start fresh everyday- doesn't matter a gap up or down- everyday presents opportunities


It's actually funny to see other people's faces( people who know I am a daytrder) when they ask where the market is going and I say" I don't know"
to me their reaction is priceless.

Maybe Robert is different and maybe you guys are right when you say limiting daily loss might restrict opportunities but from my past journals I just realized that the losing days just started poorly ( any number of reasons here) and stayed poor ending with revenge trading, on the fly rule changes, trying to pick intraday tops and bottoms etc etc that I had to finally come up with a plan how to limit my daily loss

 

SNDK was the only one that I did any trading with today

SNDK AGN and AGO gave WW short signals at the open and the executions were poor at best. AGO should have either not been traded at the enty it was or much better than where it was. The signal was valid but I was unable to get the order placed in a short enough time after seeing the signal and the price moved to far on me. In the future I will be placing limit orders and taking even more time to enter so I will either miss some or get in at the price that is correct for the risk. Automation would do the trick and I do plan on looking into NINJA for automation with Tradestation to IB. This is on the list but I don’t see it happening soon.

AGO entered very poor but took the stop at the valid price. It then gave another short signal but I missed that at the best price as I was trading the others but I was able to capture some of the losses (about $20 ish ) before getting stopped out again. At that point I was done with it for the day – 178

SNDK was my only real winner today and that was mostly done scalping it which I did not want to do but ended up doing as it gave me quite a few signals both long and short. It was very choppy though and the real winner was probably IB + 111

AGN was another slow entry where automation would have increased the results. + 31

It ended up to be a day of mostly doing homework and I will be spending the rest of the evening doing the same

-35
-2159 Month

 

I have some friends who would look at me sadly on days when the market closed in the red and say, "Tough day in the market, huh?" Then you have the choice of nodding and saying "Yeah, sure was, " or having to explain short selling...

 

Bob, between the two of us we really can't afford beer today.

 

I gave up trying to explain that after countless "...how can you sell something you dont have"

Most of the time nowadays my attitude is why bother.