2014: The Battle for Survival

[d08]

Happy New Year

I wanted to thank you for consistently putting up these on the monthly even when you had bad months. What the people critiquing your style don't understand is to make the returns you are making you have to expose yourself to high risk. Despite those huge drawdown months you ended the year positive. The great Ackman who was up 40% last year is down 20% this year. That is the life of a trader.

I use to trade like Neke till the stress got to me. Now I'm a granny trader that scalps with equity. You people have no idea the amount of stress one has when taking up 1,000 contracts in a position with each point moving your account 5 figures red or green.

I wish I still had your balls. My ability to read price movement has progressed immensely. I just don't have the ability to put on the size I once did due to a few bad hits that sadly I wasn't able to shake off. Instead of 500 Apple contracts I trade with 2K shares on the equity.

May 2016 bring everyone health and wealth.

Ackman isn't a fair comparison as he is dealing with billions of dollars, a different game altogether. He needs days to accumulate a position while neke can most likely be in and out within 1 or 2 minutes.
You don't need to take very high risks to achieve very high returns if you have an edge, that's the whole point. Otherwise you could just buy an index with a lot of leverage.

However, I do commend neke for putting up his results as consistently as he does and he deserves a lot of respect for that.
Happy new year.

 

[lawrence-lugar]

Ackman isn't a fair comparison as he is dealing with billions of dollars, a different game altogether. He needs days to accumulate a position while neke can most likely be in and out within 1 or 2 minutes.
You don't need to take very high risks to achieve very high returns if you have an edge, that's the whole point. Otherwise you could just buy an index with a lot of leverage.

However, I do commend neke for putting up his results as consistently as he does and he deserves a lot of respect for that.
Happy new year.

d08,
since the beginning of time...risk and reward levels are correlated. -- no one has really been ever to deviate from that basic law.

The Birth of the Speculator (2009)

Happy New Year 2016, d08

 

[Pekelo]

The Vix has been quite high in the last year. When volatility increase one can reduce size to achieve the same result. When size is reduced, so is exposure. So yes, when volatility is high one doesn't need to take as big risk to produce the same profits.

What I don't understand when posters here are crying about criticism?When someone publicly posts personal results, he knows that it would invite all kind of comments. Obviously if criticism (which by the way has been constructive) bothered Neke, he would have stopped this journal long time ago.

So stop whining about criticism...Very unmanly...

 

[d08]

d08,
since the beginning of time...risk and reward levels are correlated. -- no one has really been ever to deviate from that basic law.

If this is the case then why trade at all? Might as well buy the SPY.
The whole point is to achieve market beating returns while having lower drawdown.
I thought this is basic knowledge in a trading forum.

 

[lawrence-lugar]

If this is the case then why trade at all? Might as well buy the SPY.
The whole point is to achieve market beating returns while having lower drawdown.
I thought this is basic knowledge in a trading forum.

I agree, d08
That's where the skill is in trading...maximizing profit potential, and minimizing drawdowns. -- I guess I was kind of generalizing.
For the masses who don't know or realize this...then you could say they are gambling in the market. But for the skilled trader...the gambling aspect of it greatly diminishes, while profit rises.

 

[Visaria]

If this is the case then why trade at all? Might as well buy the SPY.
The whole point is to achieve market beating returns while having lower drawdown.
I thought this is basic knowledge in a trading forum.

I thought the point of trading was a) to survive and b) get rich!

What the market return is each calendar year, whether negative or positive, is probably just random anyway....dunno why everyone is so keen on beating this randomly generated number!

 

[newwurldmn]

I thought the point of trading was a) to survive and b) get rich!

What the market return is each calendar year, whether negative or positive, is probably just random anyway....dunno why everyone is so keen on beating this randomly generated number!

Because it's a sign simple relatively low risk investable alternative.

 

[neke]

Because it's a sign simple relatively low risk investable alternative.

Less than 100% return with 55% draw-down (SPY) over the last 10 years. Not sure that is low-risk. Try and add leverage to that and see how it would have worked out with the draw-down.

 

[newwurldmn]

Less than 100% return with 55% draw-down (SPY) over the last 10 years. Not sure that is low-risk. Try and add leverage to that and see how it would have worked out with the draw-down.

For easily investible equity risk, it's low risk.

 

[neke]

For 2016, I am setting a "modest" target of 100K (50%). I am distributing them among the strategies as follows. The painful end to last year means confidence is very low right now, and I cannot set ambitious targets.