7/25/13: no trades until 7/31 Markets opened lower, bounced, made a lower low and now rallying up. Still mentally noting that currently on a short via SPXU. Entry would have been $20.70, currently it is trading at $20.93. The next timing window is a couple hours into Friday. So this is ~11am EST. At present time, still looks like a short.
hi Ztradez, I've read/heard that trading the 2 and 3X shares were best done only intra day. Why do you chose these over the ES? oh and good luck on your trading/journal.
Richard thanks for the note. I hope to make this journal helpful for myself but also to others who come across. I work at a firm that can monitor trading activity and one area that is not restricted to a minimum holding period is trading ETFs. Trading futures is prohibited and because I wouldnt be content with flipping SPY or SH I felt I could better hone my skills trading these 2x and 3x. Keeps me on my toes. Naturally would have smaller positions given the vol. Depending on what happens at specific time intervals I may hold these for a day, two days, or a week or two. I dont hold for multi-week or multi-month. I leave that to the 401k. Given the shorter holding period, and the amount of capital I use, the decay is not a factor. I can imagine if I traded very big it would be and also liquidity would be an issue. The downside is upro or spxu may not match exactly to where spx should be and would be better to relate to others what my thoughts are.
7/26/13: intraday - approaching timing window and continues to look like a short in the system (again no trades until 7/31) However I would move my SPXU stop up to $20.80 to lock in minor gain since anything can happen.
7/26/13: WEEKLY UPDATE Was stopped out on SPXU trade on Monday (7/22) and have not put on any trades since then. Waiting for blackout period to be over with after 7/31. Weekly Performance $(592) for the week or (0.59%). SPX was down (0.03%) in comparison. Slow start for sure
7/29/13: no trades 7/30/13: bought 1 UPRO lot @ 73.08. I've moved my stop up to approx. 70.9. This is a 3% cushion. System triggered buy based on objective parameters. Will see how this trade goes. My expectations are a higher high on the SPX moving into 8/6 but we'll see, anything can happen. intraday P&L: ($84). New balance is now at $65,439 Start of this journal (7/12/13): $100,873 YTD Withdrawals: -81,986 YTD Contributions: 48,160 YTD Net Gain/Loss: -1,608 YTD # trades: 4
07/31/2013: Sized up to one full lot intraday for UPRO (was slightly off by about $8k). P&L: ($100.69) or (0.15%) vs SPX (0.01%)
Performance for July 2013. (07/12 - 07/31). Looking for the system to bounce back (hopefully) in August. Only made 4 trades. 2 shorts did not work out well. These were stopped out. I've tweaked system to choose not to short if indicators are similar again. During trading blackout, one short trade would have worked but is not included in the analysis. Currently remaining long via UPRO. Next timing window is tomorrow in the afternoon.