Taking 76K to 500K by Year End

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neke great job.. you are on your way, and reaching 500 k is doable, considering where you are now, its good to see someone be aggresive with risk capital & earning these huge returns. your risking money you could afford to lose which is the only way to trade, regardless of your drawdowns.. wish you all the best in reaching your goals. your doing what most traders wish they can afford to do, no pain... no gain. you have a gameplan & the balls to trade on your own terms, way to go.. you will be laughing all the way to the bank soon enough.
 
Quote from verbotenlaandia:

I think it's easy to have strong reactions to neke's weekly volatility...as I am certainly in that camp. However, I think it's more important to look at his equity curve and overall performance...that equity chart now has 25 datapoints, and while there are some obviously wild swings, the trend is still in the UP direction. I think that if all his results were truly luck, good or bad, neke would have probably blown up by now. Just by the amount of trades he's done, over a statistically significant time period, tells me he PROBABLY is trading with some sort of edge.

My questions and criticisms to neke:

I noticed up until recently that you didn't use options and held them in disdain. Now it seems to be much of what you do (or at least what you post about). What have you changed in your strategy related to options, so that you now feel you have an edge?...even taking into account mile-wide bid/asks, etc?

Also, given the big swings in your equity, are you going to do anything differently if and when you hit 500k? If your journal was titled "Taking 76K to 250K by Year End" would you consider your goal met a few weeks ago, only to then lose a large chunk and dip back under that amount?
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I have always believed there is great potentials in options. But like any other strategy, I scale down considerably when it does not show good returns. Up till the start of this thread I have made bad losses in options, so it was not worth committing much buying power to it. Ultimately going over my records it boiled down to not picking my trades, trading too actively and spending tons of money in bid/ask spread and commissions. What I started doing differently was putting a premium on asking the question (what expected move am I looking at from this trade? Is it much more than sufficient to cover the spread costs). I have only scaled up ( subject to the absolute limit I impose on options) as things turned out fine. Normally that question is usually YES for very liquid stocks/options where the stock price is above $50 when there is a qualifying set-up. Of course there are exceptions.

The trade on CMI like I mentioned put me in a dilemma. Ultimately I thought the expectations was worth the spread. Trust me, I will not take on such a spread unless the sun, the moon, and the stars all align (figurative!).

By the way I still trade stocks actively. It is just they haven't been ranking frequently on the top/bottom trades because of the size of the moves in options. Last week I made 23 stock trades vs. 12 option trades.

The second question I though I have answered before. The goal is to have a balance of $500K adjusted for withdrawals at year-end. So the balance needs to stay at or above at year-end. It is a target! Much like an earnings target. I am working towards it. It just helps to keep one focused. I won't cut off my head if I do not attain it.
 
Quote from FGBS:

Good way to come back and get the momentum back. So happy that I won't be spending my weekend here to the the "told you so" posts! ;)
Just out of curiosity... when so much money is on the line how many hours do you spend concentrating on the day job and how many hours do you spend checking quotes and oppertunities?

Enjoy the weekend and gluck next week!
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That is a good question. I try to multi-task (work and check positions). So far my work is not suffering (at least my employers do not think so). Besides my company allows some flexibility in meeting my deadlines (like working from home outside of market hours to complete some tasks). Meetings are normally the dreaded times - when I might have a position and be away for 2-3 hours. But all in all, I am OK.

If it ever comes to a situation when I think I cannot cope with a potential 20K loss while working for a $350 day, I might reconsider employment. But normally I take positions that I think 1-2 hours of tardiness will not wreck my account (it has worked both ways. I have come back from meetings and seen steep gains from positions, just like I have seen the opposite). I am not scalping for 2 minute trades, the average holding duration is a day, more or less
 
You must be getting smoked this week.....MA is down big.

Quote from neke:

That is a good question. I try to multi-task (work and check positions). So far my work is not suffering (at least my employers do not think so). Besides my company allows some flexibility in meeting my deadlines (like working from home outside of market hours to complete some tasks). Meetings are normally the dreaded times - when I might have a position and be away for 2-3 hours. But all in all, I am OK.

If it ever comes to a situation when I think I cannot cope with a potential 20K loss while working for a $350 day, I might reconsider employment. But normally I take positions that I think 1-2 hours of tardiness will not wreck my account (it has worked both ways. I have come back from meetings and seen steep gains from positions, just like I have seen the opposite). I am not scalping for 2 minute trades, the average holding duration is a day, more or less
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Quote from midlifeguy:

You must be getting smoked this week.....MA is down big.
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Down, but not for the reason you mentioned. I don't BUY and HOLD
 
Weekly Update for week 25 ended 08/17/2007

What a turbulent market! What a turbulence in my own account this week!!

Really awful trading for the most part this week. Was down about 48K on Thursday morning before being rescued by the right call on FWLT as the market bottomed, closing the trade on Friday morning. Unfortunately ran with the herd and bought GS CALL Friday morning after the rate cut. Got out one hour later with half of the exposure (22.5K) gone. Then another bad trade. How could anyone have lost money shorting CFC on Wednesday! I did. Shorted at the worst possible time running with the herd and got out at close for a 17k loss. As if that was not enough, bought the put once again Thurday morning on the follow up bad news (drawing on credit) at an insane premium, getting out two hours later with a loss of 50% even though the stock price was about the same as when I bought the puts. Was watching on the sidelines as the stock took a plunge soon afterwards to 15 and rebounded mightily to about 20 near the close of trading. What a spectacle!

Lost 14K buying DEERE calls after that good result on Wednesday, forgetting that the market had changed from MOMENTUM mode.

Watchord for next week is CAUTION. Look for the high-probability set-ups, and don't be afraid to be on the sidelines if nothing shows up.

Code: 
Balance B/F:                   		260,174
Gain for the week (less Interest)         9,291
------------------------------------------------
Balance C/F:                   		269,465
Number of Trades	            	 32
Number of Profitable Trades    	    	 16

Since Inception of Thread   2/25/2007 - 08/17/2007

Balance B/F:                   		 76,636
Net Gain (Less Margin Interest)		233,829
Cash Withdrawal		       		-41,000
------------------------------------------------
Balance C/F:                   		269,465	(Adjusted balance before withdrawals is 310465, up 305% )
Number of Trades	           	 640
Number of Profitable Trades        	 369

Expected Balance at this time to be on track for Year-End Target : 
			       222,456
Status:			       Ahead of Target		(Based on adjusted balance before withdrawals)

Top/Bottom Discretionary Trades for the week

TICKER	ENTRY DATE/TIME		EXIT DATE/TIME		QTY	PURCHASE AMT	SOLD AMT	GAINS/LOSS	TYPE

UFBHQ	2007-08-16-10-45-42	2007-08-17-10-39-34	20000	60000		139900		79548		OPTIONS (FWLT AUG 85 CALL)
TMA	2007-08-15-10-03-53	2007-08-15-10-14-12	10000	93879		104062		10162		LONG 
-----------------------------------------------
DEHE	2007-08-15-10-17-11	2007-08-15-13-42-59	70000	124500		111330		-14312		OPTIONS (DEERE AUG 125 CALL)
CFC	2007-08-15-14-50-56	2007-08-15-15-47-33	20000	415778		398558		-17276		SHORT
GPYHO	2007-08-17-09-32-42	2007-08-17-10-30-04	15000	45000		22500		-22755		OPTIONS (GS AUG 175 CALL)
CFCTT	2007-08-16-09-38-30	2007-08-16-11-52-11	40000	62815		32330		-31136		OPTIONS (CFC AUG 17.50 PUT)

							

                                        (Before Interest and Other charges)
                                       TRANSACTIONS ANALYSIS FROM 2007-02-25 TO 2007-08-18

                             Current Week                                    |	Since Inception of Thread
                                                                             |                                           
                Method          Gains/Loss       No Of          Profitable   |  Gains/Loss       No Of       Profitable  
                                                Trades              Trades   |                  Trades           Trades  
Automated       AutoTrade1           -5179           9                   4   |        5004         161               89  
                AutoTrade2               0           0                   0   |       12886           7                6  
                AutoTrade3               0           0                   0   |       -4523           3                0  
                                -----------     --------        ------------ |  -----------     ------       ------------
Total Automated                      -5179           9                   4   |       13368         171               95  
                                -----------     --------        ------------ |  -----------     ------       ------------
Discretionary   Long                 15565           9                   6   |      -31551         167               97  
                Short               -20217           5                   2   |       24223         159               94  
                Options(long)        18926           9                   4   |      228862         143               83  
                                -----------     --------        ------------ |  -----------     ------       ------------
Total Discretionary                  14275          23                  12   |      221534         469              274  
                                ===========     ========        ============ |  ===========     ======       ============
Net Totals                            9096          32                  16   |      234902         640              369  
                                ===========     ========        ============ |  ===========     ======       ============
 

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huh ... neke ... you do this trading in such size and do not follow the market all the time ( i.e. have another job during market hours )?

sorry ... that is not the way I would be trading

but good luck to you

stay cautious ... remember you are not going to be a failure if you only make 100 or even 200 K by yrs end instead of this
500K ET stuff
 
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