11-7-13 Today started out slow, as in so slow it was stopped. Sure trader didn't have the tickers loaded in their system that could be shorted. That's not really good for a short seller. Just one more pain in the butt I have to go through to short stocks. They did finally get the tickers loaded and I managed to make a few trades. If you add it up along with my short of (GRPN) in afterhours it turned out ok. (GRPN) had quite the run higher and I was short around $10.42ish when it moved up to about $10.60 and didn't give me a warm and fuzzy feeling. The only thing I really was thinking is I shouldn't be trading after hours for a good reason. I ended up doing slightly better than even, but it wasn't worth the hassle (well maybe now it was because I have the gains). I shorted (JOE) when the spoos began to really come under pressure and the chart appeared overbought. I should have waited until the 10 minute gave a TD13 (was thinking about it), but in the end I came out ok. (LPSN) was a different sort of beast. It was way over its head above the 200MA on the daily and weekly and once the 10 minute broke below the 9MA I decided to pounce on it. That worked out really well and I even managed to exit the final bid at $10.92 (low of the move). Not a great day, but at least I took home a few pennies for the touble. I see (GRPN) has fallen to about $9.60 while I type and knowing I covered around $10.36 is a bummer to say the least (I was heavy too). (GRPN) + .06 (JOE) + .20 (LPSN) +.21
You're correct that y high % of winners is well above what an average trader experiences. This is based in part from scaling into positions, much like how market makers and other liquidity providers trade. The biggest single component is the setups though. Most trades are not scaled in. I should make clear that percentage of winners examined in isolation is meaningless. What's important is edge and having a positive expectancy. Absent a positive expectancy and proper capital allocation, your win rate / amount risked doesn't matter.
I interpret the statement above to mean that we have too many SEC regulations when it makes sense to open businesses offshore because of regulations. More salient to your question though, I and anyone in my chatroom can receive greater leverage, and much lower costs. As someone who shorts 98% of my trades, having a strong short inventory list is important too. You're correct that there is a risk that doesn't exist versus retail brokers, but I'm not convinced it's much different than any given prop firm.
Just finished reading the whole thread, what a ride. Thanks for posting. You used to post the daily, weekly and monthly P&L in $, what made you stop ? Do you benchmark your results against an index at all ?
Thanks for your kind words. I actually prefer to post results in dollars, but my wife had concerns i.e. co-workers and others in her social network, and asked me to make changes. I may revert back to $, but for now I don't have plans to With that said, a per share amount is probably more relevant for many anyway. I benchmark against the Spoos informally.
11-8-13 Today was a great day for my broker. After (SNTS) announced their buyout for $32 a share, I started scalping it back and forth for a few pennies each way. It's amazing how well it held the pivot point of about $31.98-$32.01. I can see why liquidity providers ran it all day, great volume and little risk, but who was taking away liquidity to buy? Sellers I understand, because who wants to sit on an unrealized gain until the transaction is closed with nothing to gain and only potential loss if something happens in the meantime? Buyers on the other hand have nothing to gain unless they want to bet another offer comes in from out of left field from my seat. I made decent money given my level of risk, but I also reached a point once my system started giving me trade signals that I could find greener pastures. Or at least so I thought. (HMSY) gave me a William short signal at 21.15 but it expired a minute before I received an execution and and the correct entry was 21.42 which I entered. I was able to correct for it by covering my short early at $21.72 during a dip so for the most part the numbers where correct. (HMSY) took my entire day because it would come back and just barely go profitable for me before swinging higher. I covered and re-shorted shares which drove my average much higher than my expected average should be, but in the end it didn't matter much because the last hour the stock rose and I won't add shares to a short in the last half hour anymore (I learned my lesson many times with that). I also hedged my position by writing some puts that are one week from expiration and the Theta (time decay) will give me about a nickel over the weekend. I also bought some Dec $22.50 puts in my trading and other accounts to capture what I expect will be a drop come Monday. Monday morning if (HMSY) is still trading as high or higher than Friday's close will get shorted more from me. I'm hedged well enough that I won't have to worry about this one going against me Monday (if it does it was worth it). I rolled over (JCP) covered call for another three weeks out. Get premium collection although I covered the current contract at a loss (because (JCP) has gone up and offsets the loss). Once I close out (JCP) I will get it back assuming I close out at $8 or more. (JCP) Nov C -.81 (SNTS) +.03ish on a lot of volume (HMSY) + .04 on what I did close out, still very short Have a good weekend everyone.
11-11-13 My carry-over (HMSY) from Friday worked out ok. I made a fair penny on the stock, but had to give back more than I wanted on the hedge. Overall it still was a good trade, it's just that it could have been a great trade. Today brought me another overnight ticker called (JKS). I scalped (JKS) a few times and took a little out of it, but before it would reach my profit target it went back up into the closing. I will hold the bulk until Tuesday. I tweeted the trade near the high of the day. My biggest trade today was (FUEL) and I faded the afternoon rocket-fueled blast off. I also tweeted the trade near the high of the current move and after the high of day peaked about 10 minutes earlier. I had a few shares on it, but I also was fully aware of how far it has fallen during the past couple of weeks. Since I had two signals, one William and one Brenton, I was able to trade both signals one after another. The reason why is because the Brenton signal was still valid after I exited out of the William signal. As soon as I closed out the (FUEL) William signal I placed another short sell order slightly above where my average should be for the Brenton. It worked great and I was able to not only get two kicks at the can, the second kick was the most profitable. (VISN) was a quick wham-bam from the Brenton signal. (HMSY) 22.5P - .40 (HMSY) Dec 22.5P + .18 (HMSY) +.38 W (FUEL) + .40 W,B (JKS) + .09 W,B (VISM) + .31 B
I thought I would let everyone know I will be attending the upcoming Las Vegas Traders Expo for at least a few hours on Friday and possibly on Thursday and or Saturday. The dates of the expo are about November 20-23ish (check the expo website to make sure).
11-12-13 As I posted earlier, i closed out (JKS) for a nice gain in my main trading account. I had to wait until after the open to close out the options, and that was a mixed bag. It's hard to manage several accounts at once (I did setup some exits before the bell), but the options didn't start trading until what I thought was too long past the bell. Life must be good for option market makers, they sure seem to have everything setup to ensure they make money everyday. I started out trading (VNDA) in pre-market trading and more or less crushed it. It turned into my best trade of the day, although another ticker was for a while. I shorted it based on the William signal. (PERI) was shorted based on an old gap higher signal and the round number $12. I shorted it at an average of about $12.18 and covered a few minutes later for an average of $12.02 The stock I traded the most today was (SRPT). Tons of shares and I even traded/hedged with options that paid off. I'm thinking I'm pretty lucky because I stayed long for almost the whole day and still walked away with a decent (although well off my best) gain for the day. The free fall about half an hour before the close caught me somewhat off guard. I don't think it should have at all and I was looking for the exits, but just before I found it with my last lot to trade it fell and I decided to try to add to my gains. The result was giving about half of my (SRPT) gains back and not reaching a new best day for the month (although I'm not exactly in tears as today is one of the best days in over a month and maybe 2nd or 3rd for November). (SRPT) $15C + .12 (SRPT) +.03 on a lot of shares (PERI) + .16 (VNDA) + .15 Small gains with each, but they added up
11-13-13 Great day of trading. If everyday was like today, I might consider making a living at it...lol I started out buying another swing trade. (SRPT) option premium is so high that even though I don't like to buy crashes until the third day, I felt if I could buy while lower and sell the premium, I stand a chance to do well on the expected dead-cat bounce on Friday. So I'm long (SRPT) at $12.71 and I sold the Friday $13 call for 65 cents. Good 'ole Theta has allowed me to be in the money with both. How cool is that? I still need to get through tomorrow without the stock falling apart, but I like my odds. For a while I thought today would be a very slow day. I made a small scalp with (EARN) well after the opening bell and didn't see much on the scanners. Well that's not totally true, (GOGO) came across and I wanted to short it, but I didn't have shares available to borrow. I tried to position using options, but not enough liquidity to make it happen. I hate missing out on trades because shares aren't available. Oh well, at least I was able to get a second kick at the can at the end of the day. (GOGO) has a gap higher plus two days higher, or what I call a gap plus two. There's more to it, but after the second day, stocks usually get tired and the next day is a pullback. Not always, so it's far from a sure thing, but often enough to give an edge. Sometimes I will wait until the next day and short pre-market or near the open because of a last gasp higher before moving lower will happen, but without shares, my best bet is to bid to buy puts into the close and let the counter-party hit my bid. When trading opens tomorrow, I will look to offer it at my profit target and hopefully the morning action will lift it. Next on the list with a Brenton and William signal is (BITA). This one caused some confusion at first for me. My offer was lifted either above the high of the bar, or just after the bar closed out and the next bar was beginning. At first I thought I wasn't supposed to be in the trade, but there does appear to be a little bit of difference between my trading system and my charting system. I'm not totally sure how much that matters. What does matter is (BITA) did very well and I was able to gain a respectable return, even after quickly closing out some shares when I thought maybe I shouldn't be in the trade. My big gun winner today was (USU) using a William signal (I also received a Brenton later after I was in the trade). I hit it with size after breaking above $9.20ish, and when it broke lower into $8.60s I closed out the final few lots at $8.66 for a solid gain. Second best was (DQ), a thinly traded mile-wide spread that I wouldn't want to get caught needing to buy or sell in a hurry. Fortunately, my trading style allows me to add liquidity, albeit not when taking a stop loss. So the wide spread works to my advantage. It moved into the $46s, but not enough to trigger my next fade price. I was glas I entered in the sell orders right away, because when it did move, it moved so quickly that I wouldn't have had enough time to enter them in as it moved higher. I made one almost critical mistake with (DQ), speaking of getting caught having to pay the spread. On my last closing order I put in an extra 100 shares more than I had. The result as you can guess is that I went net long at the short exit price. I quickly entered in a sell order and tried to stay a penny below the lowest offer. Someone else had the idea of staying a penny below me and that caused the best offer to move down rather quickly to my horror. The bid wasn't doing much so I rolled the dice and raised my bid to my break even point to see if just sitting still would work since the bid wasn't falling also. That worked and within a few seconds the offer was lifted and I only lost the transaction costs. Because it was such a slow day for trading I also managed to get two article published too. All in all, a rather perfect day. (BITA) + .25 W, B (DQ) + .73 W, B (EARN) + .18 round number scalp (USU) + .30 W, B using a fair amount of size