Snuskpelle's CFD Adventures 2020

[Snuskpelle]

^Umm we will see, financing charge was a higher than calculated (i.e. had calculate the per-week financing to 204 EUR, but got hit by 80 EUR for overnight charge, which implies I'm misunderstanding something critical.) Sent mail to support.

 

[Snuskpelle]

Closed +361

Turns out there is an obscure +4%/year "admin fee" for TRY pairs on this CFD platform... Multiply that by leverage 7 of account and I'm looking at not so pleasant projection unless I have a very high alpha or otherwise very certain on this particular trade (I am, but don't feel like paying CFD provider).

 

[Snuskpelle]

I've had to completely change strategies for now due to the level of volatility as per previously I was getting hammered and reset back several months worth of effort, and am now doing essentially small position swing trading on all my accounts (intent is to BTFD at the possibly distant point when that is safe). Will return to describing trades on this account when it's settled. Currently in shorts in DJ30, ASX200 and Nifty50 among some local Swedish stuff.

 

[Snuskpelle]

For completeness I'll report on last week despite not having enough time to follow market much right now:

Closed ASX200 last Monday at midnight open due to weekend looking more positive than I had expected, but "stupidly" let other swing positions stay open (according to plan). Slight green by end of preceding Friday turned into big red (-12% over all my accounts) after last week, causing a fair amount of mental pain. Managed to stay away from adding last week except some Russell 2000 on CFD account, which subsequently caused additional pain.

Will probably scale in to double positions once rally demonstrably falls out of steam. My main problem is I don't *at all* know when that is, and how much more pain I will need to have until then, though. Trying to avoid scaling positions so that I hit more than -20% in case I'm wrong but it's more 'feel' than any system in that.

 

[Snuskpelle]

Another week low intensity report: Short positions looked really good Thursday evening (my time). Decided to work a bit and eat dinner with GF, after that it was back to shit on vaccine news and Trump non-news the next six hours. So, minor loss this week (2% or so) in total. Reminds me why I hate swing trading with leverage.

Edit: Referring to the psychological pressure. It's really a standing on quicksand feeling in comparison to intraday trading.

 

[Snuskpelle]

So: Got stopped out of small caps and Monday (which turned out for the better given the general direction of things). Exited some other shorts today.

Have minor warrants about to be stopped today (expecting they will be). Taking cover for new ATHs; -20% is enough for me and it makes me remember that trading discretionary with a lot going on is pointless even if "just swingtrading".

A lot of people is arguing the market is looking long term; I think the opposite is the case it is taking Q1 profits literally and discounting second order effects of economic close down bound to show up in Q3-Q4, in addition to chasing its own tail. The short trade was way too crowded though. I will return to short if S&P500 falls below 2700ish (might raise the bar to 2850 later).

 

[Snuskpelle]

So I'm going to make a few posts as a follow up on what happened since my last, in the interest of transparency.

I basically had a psychological breakdown (of sorts) after the Fed induced loss in the end of March, when I started distrusting and disbelieving everything I did. Already then, I had completely failed to make any use of the COVID volatility. It's pretty much documented on these pages and an interesting case study in a way if you can bear the trade entry noise.

It seemed like any trade I did would fail. The reason: Switching between different new strategies (sometimes insufficiently tested or that I otherwise was uncommitted to). To a lesser extent also because some other work demanded a lot of my attention, and my GF having certain issues (I will leave that out). Finally, my source of alpha got cut as Ransquawk decided to remove their 1 min delayed stream. The price for their realtime feed is not worth 300 GBP for the kind of trading I did which is to hike on major news related moves.

The feel of despair made me take out most money and just leave a sentinel amount behind. What's the point of having massive USD exposure when I'm not profiting?

My CFD account is actually in the green YTD as denominated in USD, lol, as attached image shows. Haven't calculated the currency effects yet which I suspect are a net drain, I did convert most USD before most of the trip down. The worst stuff happened on some other accounts and have since rebounded, and I'm fairly flat for the year in total.

I will add 1-2 more posts in the coming days detailing how I changed as a trader and my too new to say it works (but actually committed to) strategy. I don't intend to keep a journal next year as at this point I feel everything works fine and follows a plan.