April results

April proved to be an exceptional month for the DJW5K. It was also a very good one for me. The market put in a +3.77% month, while I posted +2.64%. I think the biggest reason for my deficit was the fact that I started the month with two positions, OI and DYN. Because my work involves the big tax April 15th "deadline" (EXTENSIONS, PEOPLE!!) and I'm responsible for managing the annual audits at the same time, as well as the Q4 close, I have little time for anything other than work. I went all but one day of February and all of March without adding a single position. As a result, I missed out on a decent portion of one of the hottest market months in a long time.

Since resuming trading in my IRA on October 1, 2006, I've posted an average monthly return of 1.99% vs. 1.65% for the DJW5K.

Winners vs. losers are still running at about a 40/60 clip with winners now returning more than 10% over an average 43 days held, while losers are returning just over a 4% loss over 11 trading days. The numbers continue to improve as the strategy matures.

May your breadth be minty fresh.

Last day of April

Had me some activity today! Early on, I was up a fair bit, mostly on the strength of BEAV. BEAV apparently had the kind of good earnings that make the stock go up, not down. It held on in the late day market drop to post a very nifty 5.53% gain. All told, I lost just over 3/4 of a percent, but about .16% less than the DJW5K. That served to narrow the gap a bit in April, but I still took a defeat for the month. More on that in my next post.

I lost three today - AGU this morning, IR and DYN. AGU posted a nice little 4.97% win in 20 days and DYN was a very satisfying +35.61% over 69 days. Not too shabby.

IR, on the other hand, posted a -2.24% loss over 7 days. If you're going to lose, lose as little as is reasonable as quickly as possible. IR did that. Still, given how I pumped up the chart formation, I am disappointed with its performance. Goes to show why I don't bother with different entry sizes depending on my expectations for the stock. Win some, lose some, cut the losers short and let the winners run. Done.

I bought AH at the end of the day.






Nice looking trend there. May it go on forever.

Moves for the week ended 4/27

OI -7.99% SOLD
DYN +1.44%
CNW -0.26%
AGU -1.54%
ARW -5.09% SOLD
UBB -3.15%
DSTI -1.81% SOLD
MCHP +10.81%
ZMH +4.45%
NVDA +3.98%
TIVO -4.89% SOLD
BEAV +2.2%
MSFT +3.84%
CAT +2.9%
CG +1.56%
FPL +2.65%
IR +1.4%
HIMX +5.24%

I also had HLIT enter and exit the portfolio in one day for -5%.

Three new additions

Picked up QSFT, KLAC and T today. All are in established uptrends, close to the trend lines. Stops are nice and tight and the risk/reward is excellent.

non-day

I had a non-day. non trading done due to a very busy day at work. Well, except for my lovely HLIT sale in the morning. Because of that one, I finished dead even with the DJW5K at -.02%. The rest of the portfolio did just fine.

Tomorrow is moving day. Stops get moved after the close. I love moving day.

hole in my pocket

HLIT out. Held for one day, lost 5.5%. Rotten bastard!

Big day, but a loss

Got beat by the smoking hot market today. My portfolio was terrific - up .72%, but no match for the .92 put in by the DJW5K. 13K for the DOW. Yikes!

I bought HLIT today. It released earnings after the bell. It was getting smacked down below my stop already after hours. Poop.

Lost TIVO today. I am not sure what I was thinking with that one. The uptrend it is in is pretty, but it is still in an overall downtrend. Then my stop was set probably too tight, just above the trend line. Why not drop it just a bit below the uptrend line if it is that close? Oh well. It may be for the best anyway.

Another one bites the dust

Lost DSTI today. Lost 5.03% over 14 days. That one was going nowhere, so I'm happy to have the dry powder. Of course, I wish it would have turned on the gas, but I didn't think that was happening.

Work was too busy to look at things today, so no new positions. With today's exits, I'll have a little room to operate in a couple days. 5% positions seems to be about the right portfolio size for this trading strategy. I want to have room almost always, but not too much. The churn is about right with 18 - 20 spots available.

I took a bit of a beating today, losing almost exactly half a percent. The market lost a bit too, but not as much. Just about even up over the past two days now.

May the trend be your friend. or something.

Tuesday morning

This morning, I'm getting whacked. Down about .75% at the moment, but that can change quickly. One morning does not a retirement make.

Two positions got sold today. After 85 days, OI was sold at a 36.15% gain. I was expecting this one to bust soon as the chart was looking like a top.

After 15 days, ARW was sold at a 0.25% loss. This one is disappointing as the chart lately was looking very good. They released earnings today, and while I haven't read up on the release, the headlines look very good. Whatever.

My favorite kind of day

My portfolio gained just about a quarter of a percent today, and the DJW5K took a 17% hit. I love it when a plan comes together.

It was one of those rare days where almost everything I own went green when the market was down across the board. I had 13 winners against only 5 losers.

I didn't find anything I had to own today, so quiet on that front. I have room for one full position. It is a little frightening how many charts I looked at today that were just too overextended within their uptrends. That often foreshadows a large cash position in my portfolio for a length of time.

Stops for the week

I set my initial stop the day I buy a stock, and I evaluate them sometime between Friday's close and Monday's open. As a trend trader, it really isn't important, or even healthy, for me to be messing with stops more often than that. Of course, this is dependant on the type of trend being followed. Traders looking to pull the trigger on a moving average crossover or something similar need to keep closer tabs on the price action. Me, I'm simply holding a stock until it reaches a price where I don't want to hold it any longer. Most often, my stop goes just below the stock's previous low within the trend. Sometimes it will go below a moving average line that has been acting as support. Still other times, I'll use a hard drawn trend line as my stop trigger. In any case, I put in a tight stop during the weekend, and with any luck, it becomes a loose stop by Friday when I tighten it up again.

Here's where I set my stops for this week:

OI - 26.00
DYN - 9.10 - NO CHANGE
CNW - 51.00 - NO CHANGE
AGU - 40.50
ARW - 39.25
UBB - 96.00
DSTI - 5.00 - this one is dead to me. I just pushed my stop up to where it can't go down much.
MCHP - 35.50
ZMH - 85.00 - NO CHANGE
NVDA - 29.00
TIVO - 6.25
BEAV - 31.50 - NO CHANGE
MSFT - 28.20
CAT - 68.00
CG - 73.00 - NO CHANGE
FPL - 60.00 - NO CHANGE
IR - 43.50 - INITIAL STOP
HIMX - 5.50 - INITIAL STOP

I was planning on adding charts, but for the life of me I can't figure out how to place them directly within or below text using the image feature. I'm bad at the internet. And I don't want to take the time and space to host them in my Photobucket account. At some point I'll probably buy a domain of my own and do this thing right:)

A small facelift

I put some new information in the margin to the right. I'll update my latest monthly results versus the Dow Jones Wilshire 5000 results, and also my average monthly results vs. the DJW5k as well. Once I book 12 months, I'll keep a running previous 12 month average monthly return as well.

I'd love to keep a total return stat since inception (or inception of record keeping), but since this is an active SEP IRA that my employer and I are adding to, that isn't practical. My contributed capital balance keeps increasing. I may calculate and publish my IRR instead.

I'd love to come up with more ideas to make this blog more fun and interesting and importantly, useful for readers. I need to do a better job of explaining my picks - what I'm looking at, where my stop is, etc. Also, I need to follow my picks better. Sort of narrate my thoughts during the time I hold a stock. One problem is the charting. The charts are a useful visual tool, but, at least on my screen, they are a bit hard to see. I am using Photobucket to host my chart images. I think if I upgraded my account, my images would be bigger. Maybe there is a better option than this, but I think Photobucket is a very useful and easy tool. Plus, the free space is huge - something I'll never use up at my pace. It seems I've tried the image tool on blogger and didn't like it. I'll have to give it another try.

I'm also going to do a better job of linking to sites I reference. Plus, I'll soon put links to other trading blogs and resources I use. There are some fun reads out there.

I've generally had really decent results over the years, and I'd like for people who struggle to be able to use my blog as a resource in learning how to win. Trading stocks is a ton of fun, and there is no reason to lose money doing it. For the most part, trading is a mental exercise. When I've had losing streaks, it is usually because I've gotten emotionally involved in the process. That's a death sentence to the ol' bankroll. Picking stocks is not the hard part. Having a plan and sticking to it is the hard part. Hell, my stats show that I lose around 60% of the time I enter a trade. Yep, 60% of my trades are losers. If I were to focus on wins and loses, I'd probably have to go out of my mind! Instead, I focus on making money. As long as I make more with my few winning trades than I lose with my many losing trades, I'm a winner. My wins return over 9% on average over an average 42 day holding period. My losses lose just over 4% over an average 11 day holding period.

I'm not thrilled with these stats, and they will improve over time. These are over 132 closed trades since June 1, 2006 when I started trading for myself in my IRA. I'm trading a slightly different technique than I have in the past, and it took me a while to settle in. I was horrible in the beginning, and my stats are skewed down as a result. I'm not quite sure where I'll settle in, but suffice to say, the trend is positive. No pun intended as I am a trend trader:)

Too hot to handle

Well, things stayed green today, and pretty nicely too. Unfortunately, my portfolio gave up some from the morning and got whacked by the DJW5K pretty good. My junk put up just under 1/2%, which is a very good day generally. The market, however, managed .9%. Strange how I'd rather beat the DJW5K than finish green. I'd almost rather lose less than the market than win less. It all makes sense to me!

I picked up another one towards the end of trading - another little guy, HIMX.






Given the price and volume action lately, I'll put a tightish stop at about 5.40 or 5.50. This is not a perfect chart, but I like to gamble on these little guys, so there it is.

I've updated the current portfolio in the right margin. I don't keep weekly stats, so I don't know what the value change to my portfolio was, but it was positive. I need to decide what sort of information I am going to disclose here. I think I'll start a running monthly average/12-month return. I don't think I want to get into weekly returns like a lot of bloggers do. It just seems so meaningless. We'll see. Plus, I don't have much time to devote to the blog. I have to earn my food outside my house, and I have a very long commute. Once the kids are down for the night, there just isn't much time left.

I would like to do a better job of keeping tabs on what I own and why. The biggest reason for doing this is so I can look back later and see what I was thinking, what worked, what didn't, etc. Plus, it is fun to go back and look through history. I like going through all my old poker blog posts on occasion. I mostly laugh at myself how stupid I was at the beginning. What a mental game that is. Also reminds me me how soft the games were a few years ago.

I wish I would have posted more in my flying blog. I'm not flying much at all these days, so I don't update it. I wish I would have had that blog up while I was going through flight training. I have a bad memory, so I know I've lost a lot of that time. At least I wrote up a few of the more important flights.

IR - when, not if

I almost bought IR yesterday. I will buy it at some point:






My favorite chart is the ascending triangle within an uptrend. This very often is an explosive continuation pattern.

Well, I just checked the chart again, and it is moving back up above the resistance line. I pulled the trigger. I'm really kicking myself for not buying it yesterday with very little risk as the stop would be very tight. Now I have a much looser stop. I could set my stop just below the resistance line as it should now act as support, assuming we close above the line. However, I've often found these charts keep trading the trend, meaning the price could dip below the line, but form a higher low. In this case, just above the trend line would be a perfectly acceptable bottom. In that case, my stop is set at 43.50 - 43.75 or so, giving me just under 5% risk on a chart that is moving at about 3.6% or so per month. Not the worst ever, but a little more spread than I like. The chart is just too good though, so I don't want to miss it. I'm willing to gamble a little here.

The market this morning is the exact opposite of yesterday's morning. Almost everything I'm looking at is green. On Fridays I usually expect a selloff of sorts towards the end of the day. No telling how we'll finish up.

All's well that ends well

After a pretty bleak looking morning, my account finished at just about dead even on the day. The stinking DJW5K lost .2%, so not a disaster there either.

The charts I'm concerned about are DSTI and ZMH. DSTI is just not legging up like it is supposed to. ZMH put in an ugly bar with volume today and looks like it could break down.

Thursday morning update

TER reached down briefly to my stop level yesterday and got sold. Then it turned around and spent the rest of the day climbing higher. It is up again today when everything else is getting splattered. Oh, how I hate that.

The market is looking very weak this morning, and my portfolio is looking a bit weaker than that so far. You never know with the first half hour though.

I had to open a google account to access my blog today. Then I had trouble logging in because of password issues. Seems google doesn't recognize me. This may be fun.

+ CAT, CG, FPL....- NVLS

Added CAT yesterday and CG and FPL today. NVLS was stopped out today for a 2.2% loss. I took a hit of -.24% today. Most of it was NVLS before getting sold and DSTI, which shaved a nifty 4.5% of its value today. Those little guys are either very good or very bad for a day's performance.

I need to jaz this place up a bit. I think I'll try to add some stats along the left side. Maybe a current portfolio with Friday closing gain/loss information along with some total gain/loss information for the portfolio. As it is, this thing is a total mess!

Mr. Softie

I bought Microsoft Friday. Take a look at the chart:






MSFT has finished retracing it's last upswing from June '06 to January '07 and is now beginning another uptrend pattern. Also note the two trend lines I've drawn on the chart are parallel lines. They don't look parallel because the chart is drawn on a log scale, but they are. Are the same uptrend forces at play again? I don't know, but the available tight stop below 28 makes this a good risk/reward trade.

Happy Trades

heh heh heh heh .....BEAV

Bought BEAV today. Looking at it now, eight hours later, it doesn't look as good, but still not bad.







I have my stop set below 31. The volume the past two days leads me to believe we're ready for the next let up. However, looking at the chart now, this guy has a history of trading below previous lows in the uptrend. Just not quite as clean as I like, but I'll give it a shot.

Today's bredth was excellent. Only OI, DYN and TER finished lower today, and all just by a touch. The market still managed to out-do me by .12%. The penalty for not being fully invested. Some days it works to my advantage.

A couple new ones

Picked up NVDA and TIVO today. TIVO is another sub-$10 stock. I like to have a few of these going whenever possible. Big percentage moves are easier to achieve with the little guys.

DSTI tried to begin a new let up today. It had the volume and ran up nicely, but fell back again. Hopefully it can give it another go tomorrow.

I have room for another five or six positions. That would give me 18 or 19 total.

Pluses and minuses and ACLS poops

Yesterday I picked up two new positions - MCHP and NVLS. Today I added ZMH. ZMH is definitely in a more mature trend than the others, at least since a somewhat major consolidation.

I lost ACLS today -6+%. This one was looking exactly perfect. It had just broken through long-term resistance on big volume. I had it prior to the breakout in anticipation. Victory was mine! Well, yesterday some asshat at Lehman downgraded the stock. I'm sure there was a very good reason for the downgrade. I still get to be bitter and hate that guy because I can.

I wish there was some way of knowing when analysts are going to potentially pork me in the butt. Sort of like an earnings announcement. It can be roughly estimated I suppose, but I'm not in this as a second career. Upgrades and downgrades are random noise that help me and hurt me (hopefully) equally over time. Given trends, it should even net help over time. I also would like a little gadget that will tell me whether investors will care about the downgrade or not. Sometimes stocks are downgraded and nothing happens, or they go up anyway. Not so with ACLS.

Anywhoo, the net on the day was +.05% vs +.26% for the DJW5K. Most of my stocks look to me like they are ready for a leg down on the uptrend, so I may underperform for a bit.

Update

I'm back! Work took over real life for a few months, but things are settling back down. I didn't totally abandon trading during this time, but I definitely slowed way down.

Here's what I currently own:

OI
DYN
CNW
AGU
ACLS
ARW
UBB
TER
DSTI

I bought OI on December 27, DYN on January 24 and the rest on April 4. Actually, DSTI was April 5. I bought a total of two ill-fated stocks on February 23 and nothing in March. That's it. OI and DYN are both up about 43% or so, and the others are too new to matter.

Here are my monthly results since November:

Decmeber -1.2% DJW5K +1.00%
January +4.38% DJW5K +1.63%
February +0.54% DJW5K -1.51%
March +0.85% DJW5K +0.96%

Since October 1, I'm averaging +1.88% per month. DJW5K is averaging 1.30%.

I cashed in my chips on the trading account. I quit the futures and started trading equity options with some success, but I got fed up with Interactive Brokers not working correctly and gave up on it. I could not update my conditional stop prices. The update just would not take. I tried on two different computers - home and work - but no dice. Support boy over there insisted it worked fine for him, which it probably did. Doesn't help me though. That whole site just drove me nuts though. It is a Java interface and it sucks. And then Java started crashing my computer because it doesn't play nice with spysweeper, etc. They do have a bunch of great products to trade and the price is right, but I'm no good at trading all that stuff anyway.