Taking 410K to 4million by Year End 2010

[asiaprop]

thanks for keeping up with the journal it made so far for an entertaining read, sorry for your recent losses BUT I think you deserve them. I honestly believe you made the best decision this past week, you prove very clearly that you dont have the emotional and mental mindset to be a successful discretionary trader and from my experience you may never become one either so I think going the automated route may be a way IF you are able to identify an edge.

Almost all the time when a trader cannot let go of doubling down it shows very clearly that this person lacks an essential skill necessary for trading, which is being consistently disciplined and risk averse. You are neither. Accept it and do the thing where you have an edge. You are gambling thats all you have been doing the past couple months.

Good luck, hope automating some trades works out for you.

Quote from neke:

Weekly Update for week 6/50 ended 02/20/2010

D-E-P-R-E-S-S-I-N-G week, down 57K (20%).

No words to explain the disaster that happened. Began on Tuesday, with what was supposed to be 100 contracts of X FEB 50 PUT worth 16K that I initiated via a Trade-Trigger. Unfortunately, there were double executions (was in the process of modifying the trigger when it fired - didn't know and the replacement caused another execution): When I realized that, I was coming dangerously close to the max loss of 6K. Instead of closing it out, decided to double down with 100 X FEB 55 PUT (worth 98K) in a bid to break-even. That was not to be. Instead the stock kept moving against me, I exceeded the max loss, and nothing fired (realised that my program was unable to process the new option symbology format), and I lacked the will to close the losses. Finally closed it when it was unbearable, losing 17K in one, 18K in the other, and the stock position was closed out at the max loss of 6K. That defined the rest of the week as I couldn't get anything right. No gain worth mentioning.

There will be no manual trade entry anymore from now till end of March, as I seek to prevent this draw-down from becoming a blow-up. Only entries initiated by my automation, or triggers entered before 9:30am will be allowed. I shall program the system to automatically close out any manual entry initiated between 9:30 amd and 4:00pm. I shouldn't even login to my account except between 3:45pm and 4:00pm, just to check no unintended open position is being left overnight by the automation.

Looking forward to better times. This bleeding has to stop!

Opening Balance:               	    	286,952
Net loss for the week 		         56,661
------------------------------------------------
Net Balance:                   		230,291

Number of Trades	            	 18
Number of Profitable Trades    	    	  5


Since Inception of Thread   01/10/2010 - 02/20/2010

Opening Balance:                   	410,000
Net loss(Less Margin Interest)		179,709 (Down 44%)
------------------------------------------------
Net Balance				230,291

Number of Trades	           	301
Number of Profitable Trades        	139

Top/Bottom Discretionary Trades for the week

TICKER			ENTRY DATE/TIME		EXIT DATE/TIME		QTY	PURCHASE AMT	SOLD AMT	GAIN/LOSS	TYPE
	
X			2010-02-16-09-45-46	2010-02-16-10-40-20	5000	255496		249223		-6290		SHORT
QHBFEB202010120.0PUT	2010-02-19-09-38-05	2010-02-19-11-04-09	5000	22915		15250		-7744		FSLR PUT
XFEB20201055.0PUT	2010-02-16-10-03-06	2010-02-16-13-18-50	20000	98000		80950		-17325		X FEB 55 PUT
XFEB20201050.0PUT	2010-02-16-09-35-36	2010-02-16-13-20-57	20000	31368		13400		-18249		X FEB 50 PUT

 

[SomeYoungGuy]

Oh piss off you bitchers and moaners. Quit telling Neke to slow down. That just ain't his style. His is a highly speculative, highly leveraged method that is not right for you, in the same way your style is not for Neke. Listen to retaildaytrader. Neke is shooting for the stars here and he won't hit his goals by being a pansy.

Neke, I still love the roller coaster. But every roller coaster has to start upwards sooner or later. I want you at 800k by the end of the month. I know you can do it. Go get 'em!

 

[trackstar]

When I used to get into that situation, a long time ago I learned you have to identify it in your gut immediately when it starts. As soon as you feel that many things go wrong you have to let go immediately. Think back on your feelings during that trade. My guess it was torturous. You DO NOT want to put yourself through that again.

A few days off and your conscious will be over it before you know it. Trading during this time is dangerous to your mentality.

 

[shbhanda]

hi neke,

sorry to hear about your bad week. my only advice, and i hope you aren't offended by it, is that if you are taking large high-risk positions in a commodity stock like X, then you should also be very closely monitoring all major commodity etfs and commodity stocks:

like SLX, JJC, FCX, GLD, FXE, etc

for clues as to where the dollar and commodities want to head. I have found that in this environment, where pretty much everything is moving together, it is far better, at least for me, to monitor the graphs of 100 stocks and etfs, then to just monitor a few indexes and stocks.

I like medved quotetracker since its free, doesn't use much cpu and memory, and does a good job with 100+ graphs (usually updates every .5 sec or so.)

anyway, good luck next week.

 

[asiaprop]

you dont know a thing, this trading style is devastating to Neke as well as to anyone. We understand you enjoy the show as we all do but I gave honest advice to Neke based on years of observations of other traders. To trade discretionary profitably for years takes a lot of discipline. Some have it some dont, Neke does not. And he is smart enough to realize at least for now. Sure you have the occasional great month or year but suchlack of discipline almost guarantees bankruptcy. His trading style is not even that bad its his not respecting stops and doubling down on losing trades rather than doubling up on winning trades which took him almost to the cleaners. He does great when he has a winning streak but throw one big loser his way and he completely loses it. I am not making anything up go back and read the thread it comes out in almost every of his posts.

So, maybe you wanna first shut up and read up on the basics of money management and probabilities.

Quote from SomeYoungGuy:

Oh piss off you bitchers and moaners. Quit telling Neke to slow down. That just ain't his style. His is a highly speculative, highly leveraged method that is not right for you, in the same way your style is not for Neke. Listen to retaildaytrader. Neke is shooting for the stars here and he won't hit his goals by being a pansy.

Neke, I still love the roller coaster. But every roller coaster has to start upwards sooner or later. I want you at 800k by the end of the month. I know you can do it. Go get 'em!

 

[lescor]

One bit of advice here Neke. A rule you should adhere to strictly is, when you enter a trade in error, always close it out immediately, no matter if it's profitable or looks like it might work out ok. It was not a trade in line with your system rules and you are not going to have the confidence or mental state to trade it properly. Just get out and reassess.

Also you should adjust your size down as your account drops. You've lost almost half your capital, so you should be trading half the size with half the $ risk. It will take you longer to get it back, but capital preservation should ALWAYS be priority #1.

 

[Nexen]

Based on previous recent posts I thought your max loss per trade would be set as 6k.

You clearly can't follow your own trading rules, if so, what's the point of a trade plan and without a plan what's the point of trading?

 

[NoDoji]

Quote from bwolinsky:

I've found you either trade on the open, or after the first hour of expectational bullshit where the mm's decide where to move the market to and fuck over a bunch of people.

Entry times are a bit of an issue for me here prior to 10 am in most cases. I don't know if anyone else finds this particular period as bullshitly volatile as I do, but I'm open for debate.

Bwolinsky, you bring up an interesting point. Entries on the open are very difficult unless you have a specific price action plan based on the previous days' action. So many trading books warn that amateurs play the open and the pros are waiting to take their money, and if you're smart you wait at least 30 minutes before acting. But I was frustrated with myself for months because I kept missing great opening moves, then I'd trade stupid trying to "get back" what I missed.

I now often trade right after the first 5 minutes has passed IF it's an inviting setup. My best trade this week was an opening trade on X Wednesday, shorting .10 cents from the top. Even though it was another gap and go (just like Tuesday), I was waiting for a short signal because it was now extremely overbought on the daily chart after three strong up days. I now use a 1-min chart for early entries. The minute X became overbought on the 1-min chart, I jumped in short, basically trying to pick a top, but my stop loss was only .11 cents, right above the high it just put in.

Neke, you always have good ideas for fading strong moves, but you're usually a day early every time. Have you noticed your big losers turn out to be good trades if taken the next day?? I call this "miss the boat" disease and I struggle against it every day. You're afraid of missing that nice reversal so you jump in when price "seems" to be too high or too low, figure you'll average down if it moves against you and end up getting a profit when it finally reverses.

But you're underestimating the power of crowd sentiment. One of my ET mentors noticed I was always trying to counter-trend trade based on price being "too high". As a result I missed fantastic breakouts and trend following trades. (I'll never forget the day in July when ES was pushing major resistance @ 954 and even though he always told me to trade those breakouts because they indicated strength, I was afraid to because price was "too high", it pulled back from there the day before and surely it would reverse there again. I believe I left a 20 pt move behind that day by not trading in the direction of strength.) He finally got through to me: If price is trending in a direction it will tend to keep going unless something changes the crowd sentiment. If price breaks through a support or resistance level, that's a sign of extreme strength or weakness.

Always look for continuation until price action proves otherwise. That's why W bottoms and revers M tops are so powerful. They occur at the end of strong moves and indicate that sentiment is changing.

Which brings us back to X. On 2/5 X left behind a standard reversal pattern of a hammer at the bottom of a downtrend (very close to a W bottom from the 1/29 low). Then a higher low on 2/10 provided confirmation for the conservative longs and resulted in 3 strong days up. Tuesday was a gap and go, with price breaking through the 20-bar moving average. DO NOT SHORT THIS KIND OF STRENGTH. Wait until the price action tells you whether it's really overbought and ready for a breather or if there's more gas in the tank.

I didn't wait for confirmation on X Wed morning, but I had a stop in place that limited my risk to around $60. I wouldn't average down if it showed further strength that day; I'd wait until a lower high was put in.

One last thing, check out www.shortsqueeze.com. X has large short interest, a "days to cover" ratio of 17 and a very high squeeze ranking meaning any bullish move in the price will be heavily amplified by short covering. Don't underestimate how far these stocks can rise even if the company is the worst one in its sector.

 

[Billybob543]

I won't offer any advice to you Neke, but I do have one question...

What is your uncle point?...what does your account balance have to drop to before you say, fuck this shit?

 

[cvds16]

Neke, I think you have found the answer yourself: automate this all, as your emotions get the better out of you. Been there done that, found some other ways around that myself by no more trading intraday but using EOD data only to remove myself from the heat of trading. Good thinking and you try to circumvent your weaknesses which is great. Big reminder: if you continue like you were you WILL blow up, I have seen it too many times and lived through it once myself and I know how that story ends ... it gets very predictable once you have seen it a few times ... it's not a matter of if, but only when ...
Don't let these last words get you down however but use them as a stimulus to further work on things ...