An Accountant's Journal

I see you replied. Unfortunately I was not finished. I have edited the response a bit. Probably will not make a difference but I wanted to say that for the record.

My comment is in final form now.

Again, I wish you better luck this week.

Lefty

Edit:

By the way, IF you wanted to improve your situation, it would be relatively simple to turn things around. Instead of having institutional spikes move your position until they hit your stops, you could learn to trade the reports to your advantage. It is within the reach of retail traders to research how Dow stocks react to reports. Here in my office, we have one person who does nothing else but trade economic reports.

Right off the top of my head, I can think of several resources to begin with as follows:

1. Active Trader Magazine, May 2005 edition, Page 44, "Market History, Intraday Report Announcement Patterns.
2. Active Trader Magazine, Feb 2005 edition, Page 26, "Market History, How the Consumer Price Index (CPI) Affects the S&P500
 
Do not get caught up in the percent right game. Your percentage winners is meaningless without risk management. If those 4 losses were significant it could wipe out those 7 wins and more of your capital.

I have a lot or experience in this issue and my advice is to forgot about % right, and focus on % money made. Being right means less and less when being wrong wipes out your hard work.

So forget about trying to meet a % right level. Just focus on risk management and try and be net positive returns at the end.

Also, do not forget that when trading to make $28 in one day only, it will only take one gap down to set you back months. I have found that making multiple trades in one day can sometimes lead to running in circles and you will be right where you started less commission costs. Just keep that in mind when the desire to go bigger creeps in or the desire to take revenge on a losing stock by upping your ante.

You are a risk manager first and a trader second.

best of luck to ya

Regards,

Phil


Quote from Accountant_23:



Success rate since trading live on 5/6/2005 is 7 wins 4 losses, thats 11 trades in a month with 4 losers, nothing that bad, I would like it to be 75% because that would work better with my strategy, but nothing is set in stone in this world.

Thanks for your input!
More...
 
Quote from optioncoach:

Do not get caught up in the percent right game. Your percentage winners is meaningless without risk management. If those 4 losses were significant it could wipe out those 7 wins and more of your capital.

I have a lot or experience in this issue and my advice is to forgot about % right, and focus on % money made. Being right means less and less when being wrong wipes out your hard work.

So forget about trying to meet a % right level. Just focus on risk management and try and be net positive returns at the end.

Also, do not forget that when trading to make $28 in one day only, it will only take one gap down to set you back months. I have found that making multiple trades in one day can sometimes lead to running in circles and you will be right where you started less commission costs. Just keep that in mind when the desire to go bigger creeps in or the desire to take revenge on a losing stock by upping your ante.

You are a risk manager first and a trader second.

best of luck to ya

Regards,

Phil
More...

The big % loss on intel was because I got away from my discipline and trading plan and it won't happen again. I have a 1.5:1 reward to risk ratio with a 60% winning percentage, that means net profitable. I would like the percentage to be around 75% though.

Also, I am net still profitable. Thanks.
 
Sold short 1000 shares of Ford (F) today at $11.06.
Covered at $11.01.

Gross proceeds: $50
Less Commissions: $14.45
Net Profit: $35.55

+.45%

I Forgot to set a limit order on my 1% target which would have been filled almost right after the first trade. It started creeping up and I pulled the trigger before it crept up anymore.

I changed the stocks I watch as well, I will post the new stocks tonight.
 
Buy long 900 shares of Ford (F) today at the open at $10.97. Sold at 1:14pm at 11.08 for exactly 1% gain.

Gross proceeds: $99
Less Commissions: $14.45
Net Profit: $84.55

The pivot on Ford today was 10.90 and it opened at 10.97 so I got right in, and it climbed in the opening minutes, I could have taken my profits within the first 10 minutes of trading, but I got greedy. Luckily for me it never went down to 10.89 (my stop loss) so I was able to sell at 1:15pm when it got back up to 11.08. Even though I didn't take profits earlier in the morning I'm proud of this trade because I stuck to my plan.

Good luck.
 
I changed my stocks for my strategy to ones that have a little more volume and move a little more during the day than the dow Jones stocks I was looking at, although I kept 8 of the DJIA's. Below should be the file for the stocks I use now and the strategy testing I've done for them in the past couple of days. Narrowed the selection down to 14 stocks, what was my criteria?

1. Avg. daily volume >2mil
2. Positive EPS - never want to trade companies that don't make money
3. Reasonable PE ratio - the only ones in my list that don't have reasonable PE's in my opinion are YHOO and EBAY, the rest of them are under 30.
4. Stock price is under $40, some say the price doesn't matter, but I find stocks priced higher rarely move 2-3% intraday unless they have news moving them, and I'm not playing news anymore.
5. Reasonable amount of shares outstanding - this like #1 is a liquidity issue.
6. Companies that I am familiar with and know their business models.

Next post is the trade I made today
 

Attachments

I traded AAPL today. Pivot point was 37.72 and it opened exactly on Pivot. I bought long because the stock was moving and I got a price of 37.74 on 270 shares. I set my stop loss at 37.49, remember .66% below my purchase price, well sure enough it moved against me and I was stopped out, but filled at 37.43 - I was pissed about that, 6 cents lower than my stop loss. So I stuck to my strategy but the stock went against me.

The problem I had with this one is that it bounced back that day and would have given me the 1% gain I needed if I didn't set my stop loss so tight. I might have to rethink the % of my stop loss to give me more room, but it def. can't be more than 1%.

Here's the P&L for Today

Net Proceeds: (83.70)
Less Commissions: (14.45)
Net Loss: (98.15)

I've attached a chart of what I did today, please bare with me as my chart annotations are primative - I don't have esignal or any other software, I did this in Paint, I will do these for every trade as well, so you get an idea of what I did that day

Better Luck tomorrow,
Accountant

P.S. At the end of the month I will post the excel version of my journal with the necessary statistics to judge how well I did. Looking forward to that, haha.
 

Attachments

Bought Long 265 Shares of EBAY for $37.16
Sold at $36.33

Pivot Point was $36.99 - - - What Happened?

Net Proceeds: (219.95)
Less Commissions: (14.45)
Net Loss: (234.40)

Forgot to put my stop loss in place after I bought the shares, I was playing emotional because of what happened yesterday with Apple, thought this one would bounce back up as well, turns out it didn't, luckily it didn't all day as well, I would have been mad if I got out and suddenly it went up. Starting out a pretty bad week. Hopefully I can get it back tomorrow or Friday.

Accountant
 

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