And I am not daytrading. If I do again it will be with Bright Trading. At this point I am going to take off in his old truck with a cap cover, and visit a bunch of friends on the east coast then head to hang with my buddy and his family in Tuscon. I think the following is true for me to be trading:
1. I need to be able to lose all the money I am trading with and not have it be a problem.
2. In order for this to be true, I need to be able to make that money back by working and saving in about a year or two.
3. If the above points become true I would do some of the more mundane stuff Bright does because it seems the psychology of it would be the same issues, and I may as well keep it simple. When the guys I met who trade with Bright now and have for a while told me what they did, it seemed very personal but I could understand it, yet for them to make money with it meant that they had some other process going on that ended up accumulating money. For me I might know some things but last year I did not make money. In this historic market that is not acceptable. Plus I'm just sick and tired of everything.
My fathers obit:
http://paleincomparison.com/
2/03/2009
11/10/2008
10/27/2008
10/21/2008
for this discussion http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=142074
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=142074 I hate posting at elite trader so here is my post.
One thing I am recovering from is the idea that if something doesn't move in your favor, that therefore it will move forever against you. The reality of the market to me is more about a lot of overlap, as anyone knows from watching something that "stopped" you at the worst moment only to return to your "breakeven" entry. This is true I think for equity stocks in the U.S. I don't know about all the other markets.
Another thing I notice is that the closing price is often a very meaningful price as far as the days price action.
One idea to take advantage of this overlap is to use a soft stop and try to work a favorable exit from that point. You can still have a hard stop farther away in case you are dreadfully wrong. If your gains on a trade are larger than losers then you can have the occasional larger loss, if this tactic saves you on all the other losses.
Here is that idea with some back tested versions of a trend following strategy that is supposed to trade those nice daily stocks. The only results that are profitable use that soft exit tactic along with a stop based on the average true range.
Long version:
| -320.67 | -597.24 | -113.44 | -284.21 | 153.11 | 547.52 |
Short version:
| -694.90 | -1481.96 | -1440.65 | -1212.12 | -2078.57 | 383.00 |
10/19/2008
10/16/2008
10/15/2008
Steenbarger blog:
I forgot how good it is. It seems over time I come to appreciate more the way he looks only at "what is happening now" type of data and indicators, a lot of which he creates himself it seems.
10/14/2008
10/13/2008
Biggest one day percentage gain in DOW:
The largest one-day percentage gain in the index, 15.34%, happened on March 15, 1933, in the depths of the 1930s bear market.
10/12/2008
10/09/2008
10/08/2008
10/07/2008
Bollinger Bands on SPY:
I look at a daily Bollinger Band on SPY as an extreme-o-meter. Check it out, most extreme deviation that I have going back to 1993:
My trading:
I programmed a script in NinjaTrader that I am using now as one big complicated indicator. Just as at times an indicator won't work due to the overall trading circumstances, so it is with this strategy coded in NinjaTrader in C#. So far by being discretionary in stock selection and market bias (based on direction and conditions) I have been beating the performance of the strategy if left all on it's own. Maybe over time I can code some of the discretionary decisions I use. Today I was long and made some money but my long bias was wrong so I am flat, up and out.
Here are some posts of parts of my strategy:
Abu Dhabi:
Is going to build an AMD plant in upstate NY, about 45 minutes from where I live.
The Abu Dhabi government will pay $700 million for a stake in a new entity that will own two plants in Germany and build another in New York, AMD said yesterday. The new company also will get as much as $6 billion from Abu Dhabi to expand the factories and $1.4 billion in operating capital. Abu Dhabi also will pay $314 million to double its stake in AMD to 19 percent.
10/06/2008
Perspective:
On the original Black Monday in October 1987, the Dow lost 508 points in one day, or nearly 23% of its value. Today, a percent decline of this magnitude would be about 2,518 points.
Here is one nation that might bite the dust soon:
This house of cards might be a preview....
10/05/2008
Some tax breaks in bailout bill:
Scroll towards the bottom. My favorite is:
—Exempting wooden practice arrows used by children from an excise tax of 39 cents per arrow.
10/02/2008
I wish I was more learned:
I heard some radical on WFMU.org talking about how some of the recent U.S. goverment actions were more similar to Mussolini fascism and not socialism.
State intervention in economic production arises only when private initiative is lacking or insufficient, or when the political interests of the State are involved. This intervention may take the form of control, assistance or direct management. (pp. 135-136)
Benito Mussolini, 1935, Fascism: Doctrine and Institutions, Rome: 'Ardita' Publishers.
9/30/2008
Statistics about 9 29 2008 decline:
I will try to post some info comparing yesterday to other drops in history:
Inter-bank lending rates have hit their highest point for more than seven years last night despite intervention from central banks, according to the British Bankers' Association (BBA).
The Irish Stock Exchange has had its worst fall in its history, shedding 12.7% amid continued global anxiety.
Gillibrand:
I'm proud to say my local Representative Kristen Gillibrand was 1 of only 2 NY Democrats to vote against the bailout on Monday.
9/29/2008
Man on the street:
On my little main street in upstate NY, there was nothing but derision for this idea of spending 700 billion to bail out Wall Street. Anyone shocked by this must be someone who has not been in a grocery store or bought gas for many years now. Only in the fantasy land of the White House, Capitol Hill and the media could there be this idea that somehow we need to save Wall Street so that Ma and Pa can conduct business as usual.
I'm not an investor:
But WFC sure looks like it is being voted SURVIVOR. It's only down %2.73 percent on this bloodbath.
9/28/2008
There is a story about a science professor giving a public lecture on the solar system. An elderly lady interrupts to claim that, contrary to his assertions about gravity, the world travels through the universe on the back of a giant turtle. "But what supports the turtle?" retorts the professor. "You can't trick me," says the woman. "It's turtles all the way down."
Here is the worst case scenario:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-keiser/the-black-scholes-atomic_b_114197.html
Written in July, so we can start to tick off the list of 7 predictions.
9/24/2008
Any decent stock trading forums out there?
I've been spending too much time on Elite Trader recently, which is always a sign I will have some losses soon. Anyway, other than putting every other person on ignore at Elite Trader, are there any better forums for trading? Please post a comment if you want.
Today one large winner in VRTX made up for some other losses. If you look at the futures this is the exact choppy sideways day that I will hopefully NOT lose too much money in.
Stochastic Pop
Recently I have been using indicators again. Mostly because I now have some use for them in finding price patterns that I know I want to trade. Indicators are a way to find these that can be coded and back tested. It's not perfect but it can be done. I find that moving averages work well in terms of showing current direction, but when this direction is shown by a moving average it is likely too late to be a real trade. When coding and back testing in NinjaTrader it is useful as a filter despite the flaws.
I also find stochastics useful when used with moving averages. This has a limitation in that a stochastic can just as much be a "trendometer" when it is at an extreme. Even so, at least between moving averages and stochastics it is possible to code and back test some decent ideas.
Here is a novel use of the stochastic:
http://trader.online.pl/ELZ/t-sm-PopSteckle.html
Hey
check it out, take 700 billion, divide it by 50 states. cant we just have the govt BUY everyones house for them who has a mortgage? and maybe give a check for 100g's to non-home owners to put a down payment on a house using govt owned frannie freddie?
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