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The bid/ask spread is part of your cost of trading. If your odds cannot cover this cost, don't do it. This is more so if you are day-trading them. It is safer to start with more liquid options (like BIDU, GOOG, AAPL etc) where you can get a decent fill by bidding at slightly better than the...

What extra point have you made? Where did you see the "dumb assumption" that you make money in a bull market and not in a bear market?

The surprise is not so much that things changed in 2001 as the inability to recognise the change for six long years. We all know (for those like me who started just before the bust - mine Dec 1999- and didn't benefit from the bubble) that the market experienced a horrendous bear market between...

The silence is deafening. Are we right to assume you've come to the end of the road?

Given the length of time you have been trading and been profitable, I assume you must have saved an equivalent amount (1.4mill) in safer investments to have 1.4million in your account. If that is the case, I guess you could start again with the amount left (60K) after spending sometime to...

In general terms it is by looking at the stocks making stories in the market, and keeping them on my watchlist long enough.

Yea, I know what it feels when you don't seem to do anything right. The good times will come though.

Weekly Update for week 40 ended 11/30/2007 Yet another horrible week, down 26K. My emotion had the worst part of me, hesitating to enter positions when signaled, rushing in when the move was already substantially underway, and similarly bad judgement on exits. Things have got to improve...

You seem to contradict yourself. You think it is possible to have good win/lose probabilities, trading methodology with a positive expectancy, capitalization to trade the methodology and discipline to trade the method and yet think there is nothing like edge! Well all that constitutes an edge!!

Didn't know someone was watching me. SHLD has cratered massively this year, with some good book value, so not looking for an implosion. Shorted a "little" in pre-market at 102.80, covering now at just below 102 for a small gain. Missed opportunity to cover below 100 this morning.

Thanks for the explanation. Just out of curiosity, if you have a limit of 1 TPS with an exchange (based on your best judgement of what you expect) and suddenly you receive 60 transactions from different clients in one second, do you stagger the transactions over a one-minute period (potentially...

Pre-return. Post 1000%, it came to more than $20billion.

With billions of dollars under management, I would like to think they were not going "all in". All they needed were the gains from the first bet to keep playing the same leveraged bet over and over again. They were using derivatives. I dont know which, but it is not difficult to see how someone...

If a $2billion fund can return 1000% a year, I just thought that should be a good target for someone with <200K, if you know what you are doing! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------...

Even then 50% per month simple average is not normal . What sample size(months) are we looking at? It is easy to take a month or two and get an average. Before giving an average you should get enough data points (like 48 months!): you do not find an average of the good months and ignore the bad...

Weekly Update for week 39 ended 11/23/2007 Slightly negative week. Hope something better turns up next week. Absolutely outraged by that DISH manipulation. On Monday morning (935am) shorted DISH after the initial barron's call about the possibility of an acquisition (at $44.10). Then came...

The reward/risk ratio takes into account the win ratio. If the average gain:average loss is 3:1 and yet the win:loss ratio is 1:5, I think that means the reward:risk ratio is actually 3:5, which is not good. Hope this corrects my earlier post. When people talk of reward/risk, they are normally...

There are high probability trades, and there are high reward/risk trades. Although people tend to not distinguish between them. If GOOG was trading, bid 670, ask 670.30, and you placed an order to buy(cover) at 670 and sell(short) at 670.30 (scalping), and able to sit through the end of the...

Well some are trend folks, and long-biased, and volatility is a killer. Had to shut down my automated long strategies.

You are right. I am disappointed by my performance in stocks, especially the long stock strategies (of course I had that hit of 47K on the long position in ICFI - week 12). It is quite a reversal from last year (2006), where I lost 118K in options, and needed my stock trades (242K) to give...