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Weekly Update for week 10 ended 5/4/2007 Just when I thought options is looking promising, and decided to scale up, I am handed woeful losses. Three option trades cost me 26K. Interestingly, had I stuck to MAEE (Mastercard May 125 Call) to the follow-on rally the next day, I might have made a...

Thanks to all who took the time to reflect on this quiz. Let us assume each trade lasts exactly one week, and you can be in only one trade at a time. With 20% for each profitable trade, and -10% for each non-profitable trade,and with the chance of profitable trade being equal to that of an...

You are displaying you own ignorance as well. I understand as much, if not more, than you about risk management. A stop loss is percentage does not mean risk is absolutely limited to that! Not putting a stop loss does not mean you are going to lose the whole amount, dude. Think in terms of...

You risk a maximum of 1.25% per trade. Max 4 positions. So you are trading with only 5% of the account? I do not see what you will achieve with that! I think your comparison is flawed.

Weekly Update for week 9 ended 4/27/2007 The play of the week was AMZN. Unfortunately did not play it very well. Shorted 2000 shares pre-market on Wednesday @ 51.65, covered after the market opened at 53.89 when I noticed the momentum - losing 4.5K, and then bought some call options (MAY...

You got it. Keeping records is the key. That turned my trading around dramatically. I started noticing patterns and strategies that were costing me. Once I de-emphasised them and started focusing on what I do well, my results became profitable.

OK, this guy took 11,000 to 18,000,000 in 18 months in the bull market of 1999/early 2000. This gives us a monthly compounded rate of 51%, or annual multiplier of 138 fold. That reminds me of a stock that rose 500 times in one-year period at that time, called Excelera (XLA). It rose 500 times...

The following are the three top trades, already mentioned, which altogether netted me nearly 34K. The remaining 22 trades made a net of about 6K (15 winners, 7 losers). Ticker Entry Date Exit Date Gain Type GOPPK 2007-04-20 2007-04-20 17003.80 Put Option (on GOOG APR 490) JASO...

After eight weeks of posting weekly summaries, you may determine what proportion is due to luck, and what is due to skill. In case you do not have enough data points to reach a conclusion, just keep visiting until there are enough weeks of data: I believe you have a good statistical analysis...

Weekly Update for week 8 ended 4/20/2007 Speechless! How do you make a killing from your own blunder? I did that Friday. I bought 110 GOOG APR 490 PUTS at 5.60 shortly before noon eastern when GOOG was collapsing, got out six minutes later at 7.20. I thought I had made about 1.7K since my...

It depends on your psychological make-up. If you can stand the sight of gains, then yes, by all means continue doing what you are doing: trading well. If the gains get into your head, I guess it is a good idea to stop until it is no more making you feel invincible

At times I feel so bad the market is so imbalanced. Consider AVNR which I watched this morning, and wanted to short at $6. The stock could not be shorted. Yet folks are allowed to only buy when it is obvious the stock has topped. So in desperation I had to buy 122 May puts (+AVQQA) at $0.60 per...

Congrats. Looks like your straddle is in the money. Right now YHOO is trading 29.47 after hrs. If it opens this way tomorrow, your puts are worth $3. Cool 66% on your investment.

Yes I was also perturbed when I found out that their total assets under management is only 2.5billion dollars. That is less than one percent what Ameritrade and Etrade have. Looks like IB is for a lot of retail folks trading 200 shares. Their unfriendly service makes it difficult for them to get...

Weekly Update for week 7 ended 4/13/2007 Lots of frenetic trading, but not much to show for it. Began on sad note on Monday losing 10K shorting the biotech craze (shorted 9000 NUVO @ 4.46 covered at 5.16 for a loss of more than 6K, fortunately shorted 4300 of the same stock Tuesday at 6.40...

Hope you provided for taxes on those gains for last year. How much are you willing to pay?

Below is the expected rate of growth of balance on my account to attain the target of 500K, starting from the 76K at the start of the thread (2007-02-25). The implied rate is 4.3548% per week without withdrawals. At the end of week six, the expected balance was $98971,while the actual balance...

At this rate, you only need two more months to your target! Could make an interesting case for a risk/reward study

In general I can use a maximum of 90% of account value for an intra-day trade. Overnight positions are somewhat less. Even then it depends on the volatility of the stock. Very non-volatile intra-day positions I could use twice that (like MTB in this week's examples), while others like RACK in...

Weekly Update for week ended 4/6/2007 Just checked back on DNDN, and it was reading a close of $18.05. If I had stayed on with my trade of last week, I could have been up 26K ! Of course I do not stay that long in a stock. So I am OK with my break-even result. The results for this week is...