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You know TA is not my forte, right?

Weekly Update for week 43/50 ended 11/07/2009 Another bad week. Down 24K(4%). Really bad trading decisions all around. Glad the week has ended to think of fixing what is broken. Biggest loss was shorting BDK on its rally after the announcement of the offer. Not enough due diligence made...

There are ways and ways to trade the markets. Some profitable traders fade moves, some others go with the trend, yet others are direction-neutral, and of course some mix all of the above. It is naive to think all profitable traders see the same thing the same way at the same time. As for...

Weekly Update for week 42/50 ended 10/31/2009 Ugly week, down 59K (9.3%). Gave back most of last week's gains. The market is begging for direction, and hit me with a wave of bigger moves than anticipated, catching me on the wrong side. Three successive days of 20+ pts uni-directional...

Not a price-action-only trader, like you could have seen from my narratives.

If I could point out one thing that I am doing differently, it is keeping records of my trades. I do weekly summaries, classified by strategies. Over time it becomes clear what strategy and what habits are costing me. So the issue becomes to de-emphasize them or find a way to play them better...

Oh, ya, it was faster that I imagined, given I was only going long stock (all I knew then), without margin, all NASDAQ stocks, and the nasdaq actually rose like 30% in that month. That more than told me I was doing something opposite to what makes money!! How did I buy my first stock? I...

Only stocks, starting from the long side (all I knew) until I learnt how to short a year into the experience. Then added stock options sometime in 2002.

Weekly Update for week 41/50 ended 10/24/2009 A nice week, up 72K (13%). Decent win rate (34 out of 48) made up for lack of home runs. Missed the big action in AMZN for the most part on Friday. Stayed away as it did not pull-back at the open to my target. Finally entered in the afternoon...

Since this question is directed at me, let me try and give a brief summary before someone speculates too far. I mentioned that I started my trading in Dec 1999, opening my account with Datek Online (now part of Ameritrade) with deposit of 16K (6K+10K), basically my whole savings from my job, and...

And what makes you think I buy every stock that is upgraded? As for the detailed reasoning, I did not disclose and will not disclose. Start your own journal and tell us what your "strategy is" and we shall judge you by your performance, trading public's reaction. And unless you tell me your...

I thought I have explained that in different places throughout this thread and the prior ones. If you want a single post detailing it all, well I shall consider that project.

That's the whole point of waiting for the quality set-up vis-a-vis the stock. You observe I hardly trade options on mini caps and lower-priced stocks like SVU, PPDI, TECH (just random picks from my stocklist table). The option spreads are too much relative to my expected edge in the...

Need to go back to 2004 and earlier for a size that small. But yes, I once traded that size. I remember when I ran my account below 2K. Could no more use margin on Ameritrade, so could not short, was not cost-effective to trade stocks (given the $20 round-trip commission) and I had to wait for...

About 100K per trade. I only do stocks automated. Stepping up that size to 150K from next week.

Sometimes it's just me against the market maker, so I just hit their bid/ask.

Weekly Update for week 40/50 ended 10/17/2009 An OK week, up 28K (5%). Lots of moves up/down. It is interesting one or two trades could have made the difference between an OK week and a stellar one. Managed to stay alive on Tues, when it could have been either a disastrous day or a very...

You know ithe option does not have to be in the money to have value? That is the time-value of the option. Bought when BIDu spiked above 418 (put was then about 8.50), and sold when BIDU came below 414. By then the put was 10.50. Hope this helps. I believe you can find more in the options forum.

Aren't there enough unemployed talent already? They could as well go into the field of research, math, and the sciences.

It's hard to nail down, but I will try: 1) Was too bearish in the Mar - Jun timeframe, fighting against the market that did not want to retrace. Lost a lot then. Now the market is more mature, so overbought conditions could get a retracement. 2) My undisciplined averaging down led to some...