What's your Nov drawdown?

Your Nov drawdown?

  • 1-5%

    Votes: 27 17.3%

  • 5-10%

    Votes: 20 12.8%

  • 10% or more

    Votes: 32 20.5%

  • Drawdown? My arse...

    Votes: 77 49.4%
  • Total voters
    156
Quote from austinp:

I got pounded out of two dozen shorts this week at any reasonable stop before markets actually tanked.
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I'm with you Austin. Had some gold positions over the last two days that just kept churning until I threw in the towel and then the HUUUUUGE move came.

Had Puts on RIMM and AAPL yesterday. Sat in them most of the morning waiting for the drop. Started covering at 11:42 EST, sold the final few literally to the second that AAPL started it's freefall.

Here's the final batch of my covers (notice the timestamp)....

11/08/07 11:53 AM EST Sell 5 RIMM Nov 130 Puts Executed @ $6.3
11/08/07 11:53 AM EST Sell 5 RIMM Nov 130 Puts Executed @ $6.3
11/08/07 11:53 AM EST Sell 5 RIMM Nov 130 Puts Executed @ $6.2
11/08/07 11:55 AM EST Sell 10 AAPL Nov 180 Puts Executed @ $5.

They both tripled after I covered.
 
<i>"I'm with you Austin. Had some gold positions over the last two days that just kept churning until I threw in the towel and then the HUUUUUGE move came."</i>

The damndest part is, had I taken the exact-same trades in ER2 it would have been a 100+ point week. Same trades in NQ would have been more than 200+ points.

ER was much more orderly than ES, and NQ was a lot smoother than both. But, ES has size I need whereas the other two don't.

The ER traders I work with were giddy over trade results there. I'm watching all that unfold on the charts myself. Signals confirm, ER moves off as expected. Meanwhile, the ES chops and churns and chops and churns before finally heading off in the same expected direction.

I trade a 10min trend/signal chart and faster chart for continuation signals. Anyone can learn to read which way price action is leaning at any moment in time: up, down or sideways. It is extremely frustrating to get the correct reads over and over again while being repeatedly stopped in gyrational noise before price action goes from A to B as expected.

*

It was my first real week of trading a fledgling pool. Would have been swell to book +50pts ~ +75pts first week out of the gate. Everyone always wants their best foot forward with something new. Instead we get tape violence, two steps beyond what I'd call volatility.

In time it will all even out. There are some 20+ point profit days ahead of us soon. I can live with averaging +5pts ES per day. The trader in me wants more. Greedy buggers, the whole bunch of us. By Monday I'll have forgotten the whole thing. Weekends are refreshing.

Perspective :p
 
Quote from damnit:

Everyone here makes 50% plus a month according to the way they act.
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Not really, most successful traders here claim under +10% so far in November. 20 days to go and shit happens.

Over the past several years you could throw darts and make money. The real traders thrive and really prosper in the recent volotility. This is when technical trading come into play big time.

Maybe you should go all cash and considers CD's for the time being "Damnit"
 
Quote from smilingsynic:

SUCCESSFUL e-mini traders don't do drawdowns. Then again, not too many of those actually exist.

I would imagine a good number of e-mini traders went out of business the last few weeks, either from averaging down longs on the ES, NQ, or the Russell, or from averaging up shorts on the CL.

This was an exhausting week for me. I sat on the bench this afternoon.
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Totally agree! This week ended the trading carreers of many traders. Incredible downside which hasnt been seen in a long time. I had my best 3 days in 3 months and every trade was LONG. Important to wait for short term volume exhaustions and jump in for the short term bounce and get the hell out. Damn I hope these fast market conditions continue but I think we'll go into some type of congestion for a bit now.
 
Quote from NQscalper:

Totally agree! This week ended the trading carreers of many traders. Incredible downside which hasnt been seen in a long time. I had my best 3 days in 3 months and every trade was LONG. Important to wait for short term volume exhaustions and jump in for the short term bounce and get the hell out. Damn I hope these fast market conditions continue but I think we'll go into some type of congestion for a bit now.
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I guess this week ended careers of traders who started after 2002. Anyone who has traded longer knows the nq can move like that. I had my best day ever on thursday followed by another excellent day on friday to make it my best week ever.

Last month I was up $21,000 on 10/11. I was having a great day then I decided to buy aapl when it started its freefall. In literally a few minutes I went from up $21,000 to down $5000 on the day. I learned a huge lesson that day and it was a great wake up call. So yesterday after having a great day I did not step in to aapl,rimm,goog, and bidus freefall in the last ten minutes of the day. Those were simply account ending moves if you tried to buy into that puking.
 
<i>"Damn I hope these fast market conditions continue but I think we'll go into some type of congestion for a bit now."</i>

I would guess the next transition past wild swings will be directional sessions. I've also hit some exhaustion fades for gains, but we can't make a career on that. Tactic that only works during extreme surge moves.

Soon we will see consolidation = program burst = consolidation = burst type of action. Faders will get run over, actually creating the stopped-out bursts fundamentally.

This two-way indecision usually evolves into one-way directional trend for awhile, then congestive pause, then repeat the process.

One persistent pattern the past few weeks (months) has been selling early in the day, afternoon short squeezes. Eventually, predictable patterns like that cease to exist once too many players game them.

I believe the next pattern ahead will be afternoon ramps that get crushed into the closing bell. What we saw Friday afternoon is likely to repeat itself going forward. Faders who have milked the afternoon ramps will not be rewarded forever. Market survival will make sure of that.
 
Quote from austinp:

<i>"Damn I hope these fast market conditions continue but I think we'll go into some type of congestion for a bit now."</i>

I would guess the next transition past wild swings will be directional sessions. I've also hit some exhaustion fades for gains, but we can't make a career on that. Tactic that only works during extreme surge moves.

Soon we will see consolidation = program burst = consolidation = burst type of action. Faders will get run over, actually creating the stopped-out bursts fundamentally.

This two-way indecision usually evolves into one-way directional trend for awhile, then congestive pause, then repeat the process.

One persistent pattern the past few weeks (months) has been selling early in the day, afternoon short squeezes. Eventually, predictable patterns like that cease to exist once too many players game them.

I believe the next pattern ahead will be afternoon ramps that get crushed into the closing bell. What we saw Friday afternoon is likely to repeat itself going forward. Faders who have milked the afternoon ramps will not be rewarded forever. Market survival will make sure of that.
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If theres one thing I've learrned about the market, the only pattern that repeats is that patterns dont repeat. True story, was talking to my mother on the phone yesterday around 2PM (she has a better feel for the market then most career traders and she's never owned a stock in her life :p ) and just contemplating which way the close will go and she says no way they bounce it again into close like thursday. Should have listened to her and shorted but I was done for the day.
 
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