Lost half this year's profits bottomfishing... lessons learned

[Centuriona]

Bottom fishing just gets you smell fingers.

Brush it off and Learn!

And stop having an opinion on bullish or bearish, play the setups mainly based on Risk to Reward and that's it.

If market followed common sense, we'd all be rich, it'll always do what hurts Retail the most.

Spot on bro. I am new here and I already found a great comment.

 

[Turveyd]

Spot on bro. I am new here and I already found a great comment.

Nice!!

And no posting* until you've got 10years of experience, it's why stupidity prevails through out the verse.

* unless your bored ofcourse!!

 

[1957may10]

Nice!!

And no posting* until you've got 10years of experience, it's why stupidity prevails through out the verse.

* unless your bored ofcourse!!

My friend, let him speak, otherwise he won’t learn. We can help, right.

 

[1957may10]

I make both winning trades and stops regularly, here's lessons learned from recent stops.

Situation: back during the market selloff I was up $9000 net profit, successfully swing trading small size (20 - 100 shares at a time) inverse ETFs like SQQQ TVIX UVXY .

I then lost several thousand trying to bottomfish them this last month. Although I'm still profitable on the year, I could've done much better if I wasn't stubborn. I own my fckups.

Lessons learned:

I should've done ETF arb swing trading, like VXX/SVXY TZA/TNA and not been a stubborn permabear

Price action is all that matters, despite pandemic and unemployment and earnings misses and common sense saying market should've kept selling

Don't fight the fed

Buy what goes up at 2day highs, sell what goes down.

Don't overtrade, especially due to fomo

Sound familiar?


... I did correctly manage risk, trading small with conservative stops, but still added up.

.... I'm still bearish and am scaling back into SQQQ VXX SPXS SOXS SDOW TVIX etc, just more cautiously

Well s..t happened. I sold NCLH today with loss. I bought it in February for speculation, now I’m penalized. Never liked this stock but price was good to buy, had no “insurance” for it.
But I did not buy it at lower price, got bad fillings. Sold it first this morning and happy. It’s -$3 now, will see eod when mutuals will sell.

 

[1957may10]

I make both winning trades and stops regularly, here's lessons learned from recent stops.

Situation: back during the market selloff I was up $9000 net profit, successfully swing trading small size (20 - 100 shares at a time) inverse ETFs like SQQQ TVIX UVXY .

I then lost several thousand trying to bottomfish them this last month. Although I'm still profitable on the year, I could've done much better if I wasn't stubborn. I own my fckups.

Lessons learned:

I should've done ETF arb swing trading, like VXX/SVXY TZA/TNA and not been a stubborn permabear

Price action is all that matters, despite pandemic and unemployment and earnings misses and common sense saying market should've kept selling

Don't fight the fed

Buy what goes up at 2day highs, sell what goes down.

Don't overtrade, especially due to fomo

Sound familiar?


... I did correctly manage risk, trading small with conservative stops, but still added up.

.... I'm still bearish and am scaling back into SQQQ VXX SPXS SOXS SDOW TVIX etc, just more cautiously

I did it for some, already sold them out with 10% profit, but for about three months duration.
Moral: it’s always exemptions and they worked.
P.S. Still have a few on long.

 

[KCalhoun]

Rebought inverses small size during the run up into today's close SDOW SPXS SOXS TVIX etc,

Lesson learned from experience is "start small, then scale in", so I just bought 10 - 30 shares each, a few thousand dollars worth.

 

[deaddog]

Questions if you don't mind.

Why all of them, would not one position be easier to manage at the open?

What is your exit strategy if they gap open against you?

 

[silvercoin]

I made a living with a 37% win rate. (2.5 to 1 reward to risk) risking 1% of my capital per trade. Couple of trades a week.

I’d be a dead dog with 37% win rate.

 

[KCalhoun]

Questions if you don't mind.

Why all of them, would not one position be easier to manage at the open?

What is your exit strategy if they gap open against you?

Smart questions, thanks!

I trade several so I can have more opportunities to win.... I stagger both entries and stops to minimize being shaken out, which happens more if you just trade single positions.

That's a pro strategy I learned from a skilled trader at one of my live Las Vegas seminars.

Gap against strategy, I sell a bit, 20% or so premkt 7:30am if gap trends down. I wait till 9:45 and if gap continues down I scale out half remaining shares. If it goes down all day I scale out rest near 4pm

Current inverses in main account:

 

[deaddog]

Smart questions, thanks!

I trade several so I can have more opportunities to win.... I stagger both entries and stops to minimize being shaken out, which happens more if you just trade single positions.

That's a pro strategy I learned from a skilled trader at one of my live Las Vegas seminars.

Gap against strategy, I sell a bit, 20% or so premkt 7:30am if gap trends down. I wait till 9:45 and if gap continues down I scale out half remaining shares. If it goes down all day I scale out rest near 4pm

How are your stops executed?

Trading small positions like you do does it make sense to scale out?

Trading any size position why scale out? isn't the stop set where you are wrong and if you are wrong, why prolong the pain?