ShortHipsters Journal

S

ShortHipsters

Hello ET,

A bit of background....

I traded in a Prop Firm for 3 years, I made a decent amount of $ but I found it wasn't consistent enough and I could earn more working in finance/banking. I now work full time in finance on very good salary ($150k+). I've started trading again on my own account (not prop) and do this in my non-work time. I've found this is a much better arrangement because I'm not reliant on my trading profits to pay the mortgage. It means anything that I make trading just adds to my income/assets and I'm in no way dependant on it. I've invested part of my profits into an apartment and don't like to keep all of my $ in my trading account.

I'm trading on my own account using a leveraged instrument (CFD's). This allows me to leverage my equity but also allows me to easily trade various markets including Commodities, Equities, FX and Indexes.

Trading style is mostly technical analysis. I don't look for H&S or DB's etc but look for general areas of support / resistance in investments which have a degree of volatility. I trade both with the broad trend and also on reversals. I've been trading Oil, various US & International Shares and major FX pairs. I typically hold positions from a few hours to a few days (but have held for up to 1 month on various shares).

I started trading this account in Dec 2014. I initially put in $10k and after almost blowing the account a few times in the first few months I have now been consistently profitable for the past 6 months.

Started Account Dec 2014
Initial Investment $10k
Current Balance $105k
Profit $95k

My first goal was $100k in 12 months. Now that I'm pretty much there I'm now looking to take this to $200k by July 2016.

I've read that for a number of reasons it's good to keep a journal so decided to share my trading exploits. Happy to answer questions and always open to constructive feedback.

Good luck trading...

ShortHipsters
 
Last edited by a moderator:
$10k to $105k in 8 months... stunning performance.

Be interesting to see how your P&L breaks down... is the majority of performance from oil, FX or equities ?
 
ShortHipsters said:
Initial Investment $10k
Current Balance $105k
Profit $95k
More...

Mo06 said:
$10k to $105k in 8 months... stunning performance.

Be interesting to see how your P&L breaks down... is the majority of performance from oil, FX or equities ?
More...

Numbers for the following kinds of things would be nice:
  • Performance by month or week
  • Numbers of trades, wins, losses
  • Biggest drawdowns
  • Risk adjusted performance
 
Thanks - I've been very happy with the performance. Whilst I was confident I would be able to reach my targets my actual performance has really surprised me. I've taken $55k out of my account and just keep the $41k in there. So trading just with profits.

In terms of performance by asset class I'm able to give you this because its on my statement they provided recently;

Dec 14 to June 15 period
Commodities = +83
Currencies = (6)
Indices = +6
Shares = (16)
Total = +$67k

As you can see the majority was made from Oil (the overall numbers actually surprised me) and reason was I increased size of trades on assets or stocks I was profitable on. Since that time I've made more from Shares and Currencies.

As for other statistics I'm not good enough with excel to easily manipulate. My provider doesn't readily give those types of statistics and the excel file they provide isn't as simple as it should be. I was able to do a manual monthly account balance (after taking into consideration my withdrawals).

Dec-14 $ 9,536
Jan-15 $ 3,569
Feb-15 $ 15,942
Mar-15 $ 23,933
Apr-15 $ 50,510
May-15 $ 60,783
Jun-15 $ 48,897
Jul-15 $ 72,717
Aug-15 $ 106,235

Going forward it will be easy for me to give a weekly update as I'll just look at my account balance. I guess this is basically the purpose of this journal.

Win/Loss ratio... this isn't something that concerns me with my style of trading. I'll happily take a 20% win ratio if I'm cutting short my losses and letting my profits run. If I had to speculate I'd say I'm somewhere around 50%, I certainly take my share of losses. I increase size following profitable trades / assets. Reduce size after taking losses. This was one of the most important things I learnt trading prop!

Biggest individual loss has been $8k on a trade and biggest gain is $15k. Those were both on oil and both I let run further then I normally would as I had recently made good profits on them. If that was a share or currency trade I would have much lower tolerance purely because I'm not as profitable on them. If I can't make it back that amount there is no point allowing myself to lose it in the first place. While my account has been smaller I was willing to risk 5-10% of my account (overall on outstanding trades). As my account has grown I've reduced that %. In general terms I'm now OK to be down $5k in trades but very uncomfortable being down $10k.

Happy to hear any other feedback...
 
So how many trades are you making in a week/month ?

Also interested to see profit:loss ratio.... must be pretty high ...
 
So two weeks ago I took out short positions on all Australian banks (CBA, NAB, ANZ & WBC). I'm Australian if you can't guess. I took out 1,000 shares short on each on 4th Aug and added later that week another 250 shares short on each. I took these positions prior to the Reserve Bank decision on Interest Rates.

After trailing these in the past 2 weeks I've now all but closed out these positions.

+$13,100 (closed positions)
+$3,000 (unrealised)
Total trade +$16,100

Killer trade which did nothing but go my way as most banks announced capital raising at a discount to market.

(this trade was already included in my account balance)

I was also holding a short on EUR/USD of $300k from Friday @1.1150. Closed this at 1.1092 and 1.1075.
+$2,600 on the trade.

Current positions are:
Short 1000 shares of NFLX @ $123.50... will see how this performs today. May close if stock is still strong.
Some other minor longs in some mining stocks totalling approx $1k profit (unrealised).

Account balance +$108.4k (incl unrealised)
 
Mo06 said:
So how many trades are you making in a week/month ?

Also interested to see profit:loss ratio.... must be pretty high ...
More...

Probably 5-20 trades a week but depends on the volatility. I'm generally in 1-5 positions at any one point in time.

I can't work out easily the win ratio based on the info my broker provides (it's excel so I'm sure some could do it if I ask). My guess is it's around 50% but I trail my winning trades which makes the difference. As I said before the % doesn't really impact me as I add &/or trail my winning positions. Try to cut my losers short or give time to turn around.
 
No I mean the P:L ratio...

Simply net profit / abs(net loss)

So if over a week you make a $4000 profit and a $500 loss.

P:L ratio is 8:1.
 
Mo06 said:
No I mean the P:L ratio...

Simply net profit / abs(net loss)

So if over a week you make a $4000 profit and a $500 loss.

P:L ratio is 8:1.
More...

Ok yeah I now understand what you're asking.... basically a weighted win / loss ratio (weighted to $actual value of wins/losses). However this won't take into account the volatility prior to closing out the position which is probably just as important.

I might put summarise my trades each week (realised/unrealised) and this will give you an indication?
 
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