Best or Worst Trades Ever

Originally posted by darkhorse

And that, my man, is a DEFENSIVE game.
More...

My thoughts on the subject exactly Dark and as usual you found a better way of expressing it :)

Publias
 
Good pitching beats good hitting.

Which reminds of a Buffet quote,"the markets always pitching but you don't have to swing."
 
best trade:the day the emlx kid posted the bogus news release and emlx tanked like 50 points.i went long at about 61 and they halted it.it opened like 130 i finally got out at 123.

worst trade:was trading jdsu a lot.i came in one morning and the premarket ask was 20 points less than it was the night before so i took it thinking someone entered a wrong order.turns out jdsu had split that night and i forgot about it.so i owned jdsu way higher than it opened.no they wouldnt bust it.fortunatly it was tiny lot.
 
One thing that I want to comment on in consideration of best trades is to make a distinction between the "best" as in managed best with a clear plan and perfect and flawless execution and "luckiest"...Five years ago when I started I would have never known the difference between the two as I was a wild gunslinger shooting for the stars and taking alot of risk that I was not warranted...Sure this led to a number of big out of the blue winners with some crazy options plays...Unfortunately, most of those profits were given back in those first 2 years of trading insanity...

I know my worst trade of all time...Series of two positions on at the same time...NSCP in July, 1997(actually almost the 5 year anniversary of this bomb)...Went long 5,000 shares of this stock at an average cost of about 41.00 only to liquidate the whole position around 35 3/4(pre-decimilazation)...At the same time had a bunch of AAPL which 2 weeks later spiked thru the roof when Steve Jobs returned...Sold the AAPL and the NSCP in a frenzied newbie panic...That series of trades still gives me shivers as I was margined to the hilt and was getting my feet wet in a typical bull market summer rally(first year trading started in 1997, summer)...
 
Originally posted by darkhorse




Dan is it my imagination or do we frequently end up disagreeing...I don't want to get on your bad side but it seems you have a habit of nitpicking points for argument's sake without looking at the deeper level. Surface level knowledge isn't much better than ignorance, in fact in some ways it could be worse because it breeds false confidence.

Defense is MUCH more important than offense in trading, no question whatsoever. None at all.

Do legions of traders wash out because they can't see the obvious opportunities?

No.

They wash out because they waste their precious capital on crap plays and emotionally frag themselves in the process, thus inevitably winding up busted out and scared when the golden play materializes.

'XYZ would have been a motherload but I was too emotionally scarred / my money was already gone....if only I'd waited patiently...' is the sob story of a million losers.

Traders don't need 'offensive prowess.' They need the patience to lay chilly until the big score comes. They need to preserve their capital and their emotional reserves to assure full strength for the easy layups and the fastballs down the middle.

And that, my man, is a DEFENSIVE game.
More...

Firstly, Darkhorse, i have no problem with you disagreeing with me. If my answers seem curt it's because I'm not in the habit of making longwinded speeches where a few short words will suffice. Perhaps YOU could do well to look at the deeper level of my "nitpicking" and realise I'm simply pointing out potential errors in thinking that could do much harm later on.

I felt offense/defense was a bad analogy to trading. You can't tell me in sport that defense is the key to winning! If all you can do is play defense, you just won't lose. You gotta be able to put the ball in the basket to win.

In trading, i would be the first to agree that taking care of your losses is 75% of the game. In fact, I bet I can mathematically quantify just what sort of an impact various levels of losers have on overall trading better than most people.

In trading, I would equate "offensive prowess" with BEING ABLE to recognise those "layups" and "sitters".
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top