Mr Subliminal's Remote Trading Journal

M

Mr Subliminal

I've been lurking on this forum for some time and have decided to start a thread describing various aspects of life as a remote trader (slacker). If you want to hone your trading skills (big drawdown), this is not the place - there are many fine threads here on ET for that purpose. If, however, you seek some relief from the stresses of the trading day, then drop by and learn how I prepare myself for daily battle (plug in Linksys router), get details of some trades with commentary and, if I'm still conscious, be rewarded with a hard-hitting postmortem afterwards (fist through monitor). The emphasis will be on honesty, with my inner thoughts expressed in parenthesized red - my style, for those that remember, is based on Kevin Nealon's Saturday Night Live character "Mr Subliminal".
I have paid my learning dues (Ferrari, Xanax 1mg) and my trading is now on a new level (slow bleeding, Xanax 0.25mg). Well, enough about me - I'm sure you'll get to know me better with time (www.amw.com).
Oh, and if the color red is too harsh on the eyes, let me know.
 
Monday mornings are always the hardest as I barely pull myself out of bed (restraints). Then it's a cup of hot instant coffee as I scan a pile of newspapers, sadly most of them from last week. The sound of a hysterical 14 year old, whose voice is breaking, jolts me from my semi-comatose state, and I look up to see Jim Cramer on CNBC. All the futures are up so I mentally rehearse my Island buy on bid hotkeys and my flash size routine ((1) 5000 shares, 3 full points below inside bid; (2) cancel; (3) go to (1)), the latter to be used once I've fully scaled into my position (400 shares).
The coffee is starting to kick in as I stagger over to my work area (terrace), flick the switch on the old Compaq Presario and Linksys BEFSR41, fire up my DAT s/w (Watcher clone), graphics (NexTrend) and news service (Yahoo!Finance), calibrate my mounted telescope pointing at the apartment opposite (midday doldrums), and await the opening of the games.
 
calibrate my mounted telescope pointing at the apartment opposite (midday doldrums).....[/B]
More...


:D

We are in the chop; what is on the telescope? :p
 
Not a bad morning with my stocks in the software sector showing strength. Two quick trades in SEBL and my P&L is now two digits, an admirable feat yet clearly no threat of numeric overflow to the software designers. Obviously the areas I need to work on are holding on and size (Dr. Ruth). As I talk I ruefully glance at the 40 cent move I missed in PSFT.
Fitz, you ask about the telescope. There's still plenty to keep me occupied. Larry Glasscock, CEO of Anthem (ATH) was just on CNBC discussing the proposed bid for Trigon Healthcare. I have a strong feeling he won't be changing the name of the merged entity.
 
Thank you, AAA. As a rule, I will not divulge my daily P&L - suffice it to say that I'm satisfied with today's performance both from a financial (dug myself out of a two-digit hole) and discipline (no margin calls or broken equipment) viewpoint. I religiously update my trading log daily and append a JPG as proof.
Finally, before I go out clubbing (www.dcdancenet.com/wheretodance/) till the wee hours of the morning, I shall leave you with some statistics I took off my broker's website - draw your own conclusions. Where data seems incomplete, that's because it is. This includes about 8 offices and remote traders.

Code: 
                       Positive          Active       % Positive 
                       Traders           Traders
January 99                257              384            67 
February 99               178              411            43 
March 99                  241              473            51 
April 99                  313              466            67 
May 99                    248              520            48 
June 99                   246              569            43 
July 99                   189              574            33 
August 99                 279              585            48 
September 99              258              591            44 
October 99                301              583            52 
November 99               409              591            69 
December 99               445              597            74 
1999 Total                457              825            55  
January 00                411              594            69 
February 00               477              630            76 
March 00                  472              674            70 
April 00                  476              681            70 
May 00                    412              690            60 
June 00                   383              723            53 
July 00                   342              709            48 
August 00                 352              696            51 
September 00              304              723            42 
October 00                425              737            58 
November 00               362              729            50 
December 00               382              711            54 
January 01                382              691            47 
February 01               270              689            39 
March 01                  266              688            33 
April 01                  341              657            52 
May 01                    261              636            41 
June 01                   286              585            49 
July 01                   196              559            35 
 
March 02                  186              430            43

Me and my trading log :
col-log_jpg.jpg
 
Got whipsawed a couple of times before the economic numbers came out, which also caught me off guard. I remembered they were due out before I went to sleep and also saw them mentioned on Toni's post (Brandon's thread) this morning at about 8:30am, yet I still managed to forget in the short time that elapsed (THC). This is one of the disadvantages of not trading in an office environment, though I doubt this would have happened to a serious remote trader.
When I'm not trading, sleeping or reading, I spend most of my spare time developing scanning software (cassette basic) I have written using my own proprietary setups. It's still in the debugging stage, but I'm especially excited about Anorexic Goatherder and Bespectacled Scarecrow, long and short setups (random entry) respectively. Once completed, I have no doubt that this will afford me a significant advantage over my current scanning method (mounted telescope).
 
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