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05/02/2009 Weekly Update for week 16/50 ended 05/02/2009 Awful, awful week, down 43K (13.8%). Thought I bottomed two weeks ago. Now it gets uglier. What began as a good week on Monday, with a +20K gain, got progressively worse as the days went by, reaching a climax on Thursday with two...

The search for an optimal return. No one sets out to have a drawdown.

What I outlined is the order I will try and get to my ultimate goal (3.5m) by year end. The start is of course to break-even (since I am currently underwater), after that build some buffer (of profit), and then proceed to accelerate the returns through supersize positions (not more than optimal...

Weekly Update for week 15/50 ended 04/25/2009 Moderately positive week, up 6K (2%). Dug a deep hole for myself on Monday, and spent the rest of the week climbing back to positive. It appears to be my last desperate act of averaging down before I put in the automatic closure on Tuesday...

No, they chose to ignore the bad news when the market is in a rally mood (remember it was coming from a deep sell-off). Then, when it has rallied enough, they start once again paying heed to the ugly news.

So SLG, you're now down to 15.30 after I got out? Had I exercised the puts, my account should be higher by 223K! Thanks for teaching me.

I work on the computer all day (excluding meetings), so it is not tough to have a few web sites (including my broker's) open in the background where I can check quotes / other information and place trades from time to time. I average 4-5 trades a day. So that's not really time consuming. Of...

04/18/2009 Weekly Update for week 14/50 ended 04/18/2009 Dreadful week, down 67K (18%). Lost my tenuous gains for the year and more! I was served notice of this on Monday when I lost 31k shorting BAC and other financial stocks with leverage. Struggled the rest of the week to claw my way...

Congrats on your 15%. See you at 74% by year-end. BTW, if 300 trades/quarter is intense, what would you say to someone doing 300 trades a day?

Weekly Update for week 13/50 ended 04/11/2009 Another moderately positive week, up 10.5K (2.9%). Pleased to end the week positive given how horribly I traded. Thursday was full of scary trades.Bought 5000 WFC at 19.69 shortly after market open. The stock kept drifting down and I added...

I entered it as an intra-day trade, and closed it out before EOD. I know it would have gone my way if I had held on overnight.

Weekly Update for week 12/50 ended 04/04/2009 A moderately positive week, up 7K (1.9%). Still drifting sideways. What's annoying is making so many trades (24) and having the end result accounted for by less than one trade. Built up nicely Monday to Wed, lost it shorting the market move on...

For the monday trading. Initially I was quite skeptical of the initial strength, shorted some SPY, but covered an hour later at a loss. It became clear soon afterwards the market loved the toxic asset plan (even overseas markets did the same), hence SPY call later in the day. As you can see...

Well, I use it for both stocks and options. I like the fixed stock costs (20$ round-trip - $14 for me) regardless of the size of the order. For options though, it appears IB is a bit cheaper. I do not watch a lot of graphs, just check the quotes occasionally on issues I am interested in, fill...

Weekly Update for week 11/50 ended 03/29/2009 An OK week, up 9K (2.7%). Lots of hits and misses. Largely overtraded. End result is just sufficient for a week's worth of effort. Still refining my methods on position sizing viz-a-vis expectation for profit and risk. Happy to announce the...

No, finance capitalism is part of the productive process - via services rendered. It might have gotten ahead of itself, but then that's why there is a correction.

03/22/2009 Weekly Update for week 10/50 ended 03/22/2009 Negative week, down 15K (4.2%). The week began on a deeply negative note on Monday. Shorted C, lost 13K, turned around and went long - wrong time - lost another 10K. If only I could restraint myself from revenge trading!. Not a lot...

Weekly Update for week 9/50 ended 03/14/2009 An OK week, up 24K (7%). Lots of activity (30 trades), and a high winning percentage (73%) helped offset the terrible losses on Thurs. Lost more than 33K shorting MS and SPY with excessive leverage. But for that the week should have been very...

Exited at several prices. 500 shares were exited soon after entry to bring exposure within intended size. The remaining 4500 were exited the following morning at different prices (placed a limit at 41, partially executed and go rid of the rest at lower prices: 03/03/2009 09:33:35 Sold...

Care to explain this apparent contradiction? Are you saying the patterns work only because they are combined with other dsicretionary consideration? If so why don't we attribute the success to the discretionary element?