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

I sold most of my swing trading inverses today starting premkt to lock in gains from last Thursday & Friday entries I'd held over the weekend.

I'm trying to take action on lessons learned, great to see it paid off.

Here's today's trades
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It is very impressive you are able to keep track of some many trades. I would be lucky if I can track 3-5 each day. Is it on autopilot?
 
It is very impressive you are able to keep track of some many trades. I would be lucky if I can track 3-5 each day. Is it on autopilot?

I've often done 20+ trades daily, I set up buy stop orders manually ahead of the open, plus more in-market
 
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've found trading Cdn mining and depressed Cdn energy far easier then shorting anything in recent weeks.The upward momentum on the gold and silver miners has been extremely profitable ( eg one metals fund my wife bought on March 23 is up 52.5% which is incredible in that time frame ).
 
I'm down -$645 today, ouch. That's a big red day for me. My overnight small inverse positions gapped against me.

I bought inverses yesterday late because they ran up strongly into the close, and I thought the unemployment numbers would be bad, which they were, etc.

I admit it, I overtraded too aggressively, impatiently. I sold much of my inverse shares at a loss aftermarket today; I'm still holding a few k worth.

Lesson learned: wait longer before scaling into positions, so you have more unrealized profit to work with.

Example: instead of buying at $32 and scaling in at $36, wait til $40 before adding to a winner.

I'm disappointed in myself for trading too much size aggressively, esp since choppy rangebound market. My hope is that by continuing to be public and transparent about some of my failures it'll help me improve and fck up less.

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...and I thought the unemployment numbers would be bad, which they were, etc...

Indeed. And if you look back past the last 7 Thursday numbers, the markets went up 5 of those 7 times, IIRC.

This time though...NFP tomorrow? This will be the big one, along with the unemployment rate. I am absolutely flat for that one in the morning. Tempted as I am to go long on the overnight, which worked out quite handily all week had I had the guts to do it...Mreh. Not this time. I'll try to daytrade it tomorrow with some fliers, but these are uncharted waters. Caution is definitely warranted.
 
I'm down -$645 today, ouch. That's a big red day for me. My overnight small inverse positions gapped against me.

I bought inverses yesterday late because they ran up strongly into the close, and I thought the unemployment numbers would be bad, which they were, etc.

I admit it, I overtraded too aggressively, impatiently. I sold much of my inverse shares at a loss aftermarket today; I'm still holding a few k worth.

Lesson learned: wait longer before scaling into positions, so you have more unrealized profit to work with.

Example: instead of buying at $32 and scaling in at $36, wait til $40 before adding to a winner.

I'm disappointed in myself for trading too much size aggressively, esp since choppy rangebound market. My hope is that by continuing to be public and transparent about some of my failures it'll help me improve and fck up less.

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Ken i'll be honest on the short side i think you need the ball rolling a little down before you jump on and try to bottom fish them. Honestly these are all tough trades right now as its very choppy. Your strategy of wait till your up more to scale in more is a good idea . It will prevent you from adding too early on false move which were getting a lot of lately . I know that will be tough because everyone wants to load the lows . But you need sustained moves down to make money in these and the trend must change to down before adding .I sill rarely trade these.
 
Indeed. And if you look back past the last 7 Thursday numbers, the markets went up 5 of those 7 times, IIRC.

This time though...NFP tomorrow? This will be the big one, along with the unemployment rate. I am absolutely flat for that one in the morning. Tempted as I am to go long on the overnight, which worked out quite handily all week had I had the guts to do it...Mreh. Not this time. I'll try to daytrade it tomorrow with some fliers, but these are uncharted waters. Caution is definitely warranted.

Great point, smart to look at prior patterns, thx, I'll remember that re Thursday #s.

Excited to figure out how to trade tomorrow's 8:30am report...... I'll try that ETF arb strategy, eg buy a little of both TNA/TZA and FAS/FAZ before 830 then scale into whichever runs up right after release.

Plus finger on trigger to load up TVIX if negative reaction.

Plus intraday swing whichever trends up after the bell. And weekend hold on size whoever closes strong. Gotta love trading
 
Ken i'll be honest on the short side i think you need the ball rolling a little down before you jump on and try to bottom fish them. Honestly these are all tough trades right now as its very choppy. Your strategy of wait till your up more to scale in more is a good idea . It will prevent you from adding too early on false move which were getting a lot of lately . I know that will be tough because everyone wants to load the lows . But you need sustained moves down to make money in these and the trend must change to down before adding .I sill rarely trade these.

Outstanding points, sincere thanks, completely agree. I'm confident the market is going to crash hard and am trying to establish a solid inverse port without big drawdown, I trade these daily.

Your earlier point re short swing duration 2-3day max due to decay + chop market is smart. You're very sharp, industry pro level thinking... thx, appreciate your tips.

I think we're on the cusp of a rare big opportunity like February precrash, challenge is threading eye of needle to scale, goal is to turn 70k to 250k on crash .

Reminder sec considering limiting/restricting 2x 3x and inverses, likely will occur without advance notice so I want to scale asap
 
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