On vacation from trading till June 2

I am taking few days off. Good luck trading. The market sentiment is now turning negative but global economy appears to be recovering. See nice analysis of current state of affairs in the economy: http://scottgrannis.blogspot.com/2009/05/green-shoots-turn-red-hot.html. So, be careful out there. If the market corrects then I will be out there with a boatload of high dividend paying international companies to buy. If I can get 10% on the dividend from solid companies, whose dividends have been safe over decades, then who needs more and who cares where the stock prices go? That's a really good return on my equity. Over the next six months buying sharp sell-offs will be profitable. Probably 820 on sp500 will prove to be difficult to crack. Only when economy shows further weakening that buying on sell-offs will stop working and we may go down and stay down for a long time. But I don't believe that this coming sell off will be that kind of irreversible event since the economy is flooded with so much liquidity. With that much liquidity, the value of cash relative to other goods is bound to go down, i.e. share prices and commodity prices ought to go up. For the purpose of the portfolio in the blog here, I will keep the strategy intact - buy 1/3 SDS when we crack 875 and then buy the last 1/3 when we crack 850. And then, sell the position at 820. I don't think we are going to go much further than that in the coming sell off.
Sami.

What a day!

The market really got ahead of itself today. I was very sure that market would go down today. Judging from the up volume vs down volume, the block trades were mostly to the downside and yet the market went up big time. Obviously the big boys were selling in the rally. This says to me that some of the big boys eg Goldman Sachs et al had much to unload. This unloading kept going till around 2:00 Eastern time and then it slowed a bit. I watched money flow at the site: http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3022-mflppg-moneyflow.html. They update market data every hour and for volume on the downtick was way higher than the volume on the uptick all day long on SPY. This was complete opposite of what happened on Friday. I am so sick of such flagrant manipulation of the stock market. It makes me sick and want to leave stock market and instead buy me a rental property instead or maybe start my own business, anything but this totally manipulated market. The volume of trade that Goldman Sachs and couple of other big investing firms do is astounding and they are able to dictate when the market will be brought down and when the market will be made to rally. They jammed the market initially to give themselves higher price to exit the sale side of the trade. I just don't get it: who is buying in this market? I can see buying for dividend. That totally makes sense. Actually, if you buy 100 shares of VZ at $30 and sell 100 shares of VZ puts st30 Dec 09 you would get $600. Cost for your 200 shares will be at most 6000-600 = 5400. You will get 8% yield on your 200 shares almost for ever since VZ, although heavily loaded with debt, is not going to go bankrupt - too big to fail? So, I do get the buying for dividend. But where is the proof that economy is going to turn the corner? Today's excuse was just ludicrous and they all know it. The consumer "hopes" to see a better future for himself but his is not seeing it in his life now. What kind of logic or excuse is that for a monster rally with below average volume? You can't even short this market because you don't know how much more these big guys need to make before they are done. And why would they be done if they are raking in all this money everyday? I believe the rally will not end utill the money managers of pension funds and other small investors actually run out of their investing money. Only after the big boys have suckered these people in and there is no one left to buy, then they will leave the market to its device. I wish common folks invested their money in an index fund and I wish there were no money managers to eat into your savings. How can these money managers be so easily manipulated? I just don't get it.

My plans

33% SDS

Today was a reversal day and I will start to wade in the troubled waters of investment by placing 1/3 into SDS at tomorrow's open. If we do get a break through the 20DMA I will then add to this position another 1/3. Later I will add the last 1/3 when we are below 820. I am trying to play this cautiously. I will give myself room to exit the trade if we somehow rally past 1030 mark.

No change

Market is non-directional right now. I am going to stay 100% Cash for now. Market sentiment is very bullish but there are not enough bulls with money to commit to this market (look at the volume). None of the bad news is making any impact on the market and that is very strange to me. Of the face of it, it looks like the market is simply manipulated to stay afloat. So, whoever is ablt to manipulate the market, must have a purpose in mind and until that purpose is achieved the market will remain afloat unless the entity runs out of money. It is too dangerous to trade in this market. This market can stay like this for a long time. Or it can shoot to the moon anyday. Or it can tank big time. So, you can't play this market even with some options play. Suppose you buy out of the money calls and puts and the market does not go anywhere. Best thing to do is to stay on the sidelines. But, if I were forced to play the market, I will play on the long side and be willing to withstand volatility of plus and minus 10% on SP500. The upside may be 1000 on SP500 while the downside may be limited to 820 for now. The P&F 3-box reversal charts have the next target as 935. Who knows.

Market neutral?

Are there profitable market neutral strategies where you do not have to worry about whipsaws or trend? A simple minded example of (Buy stock plus sell covered call) is not market neutral. It is profitable only in a narrow range about the strike price.

Money management and risk quantification

Suppose I earn $x/yr and have a total savings of $y. Suppose I have expenses $z/yr. A good rule of how much you should invest in cash, stocks, bonds, home, or whatever is that you should think of your needs $z/yr first! Your $y is reliable but your income $x is not. A conservative estimate is that you should at least keep one year's expenses in cash savings. So, first you should stash away $z from $y in a secure in 4 rolling CDs: (1) z/4 a 3 month, (2) z/4 a 6 month, (3) z/4 a 9 month, and (4) z/4 a 12 month. You need to keep renewing them as they mature. So, at the end of 3 month period CD#1 will be placed in another CD of maturity 1 year so that you will have 4 staggered CDs. Try to get as good a deal on them as you can - usually online banks such as ING are better. If your job is absolutely secure then you may not need this much protection and a 6 month's expense may be enough. Now, what you need to do with regular income $x? Every month government gives you approximately 30% return on a part of your money if you deposit it in a 401-k or 403-b account. That is really good deal. So, if ($x-$z) has enough money to max out, say $w/yr, on the 401-k go for it. Check IRS website for the upper limit of your contribution or ask the human resources officer at your workplace. You can get the money deducted from your paycheck and deposited directly in some investment account that your employer is supposed to help you set up. Usually the firms allow you to invest in only mutual funds. Best way to handle this investment is to use broad index fund such as SP500-based index or Russell6000 based index. Put roughly 1/2 in US equities 1/4 in Europe and 1/4 in Asia. You need not look at the return till you are 10 years from retirement. At that time you can start moving 10% each year into bond funds, most liely Tips. When you are done with these you will have $(x-z-w)/year as saving. So, your left over bank account $(y-z) will be growing from your saving #(x-z-w)/year. Of course as your x increases, your z and w will also. So, what are you supposed to do with this growing pile of money p = $[(y-z) +(x-z-w)]? This is a real problem for most working people. They already have their job to worry about and they do not have time to day trade with this money. Neither do they have time to start a business with this money. Many people just leave the money in bank savings account. Some others try to leave them in mutual funds. Some others try to play the wall street Russian roulette - some times they win some times they lose. As the money $p grows one gets more impatient with trying to find a way to make use of it. Maybe donate some of it to good causes. Of course some of this money will be used in the time of retirement or maybe towards expanded expenses z some year.

How to manage extra money $p? Note that if $p were to suddenly vanish it will not affect your life one bit. In that sense $p is really an extra something in your life and it could be used to speculate at least conservatively to grow it at as reasonable pace as possible. We would like to grow it judiciously so that we can pass it on to a good cause or our children or use it in our old age. It turns out that whether your are conservative or aggressive on average you cannot expect to grow money much in excess of the market or economy as a whole. And with the demands of our jobs we really do not have time to follow the market too closely. May be we can spend 1/2 hour each night. So, what should we do? Stock market perhaps is the easiest financial vehicle to utilize for growing a pile of money. I have a reasonable suggesstion how to do that based on the observation that market signals are not always clear cut. The stock market is either trending up, trending down, or vacillating - neither trending up or down. There are many ways to tell these, but a simple trendline on DAILY CHART OF 1-YEAR period is sufficient to tell trend. One can draw the support and resistance lines and pretty much know that there is a trend going on or not. But sometimes one is not sure. Sometimes one is only partially sure. Thus , there are five results we come up with - (1) definitely up, (2) probably up, (3) probably down, (4) defintely down, and (5) can't tell. These are five decisions of how to allocate money in the market. Therefore, let us divide our money into two parts (p/2) + (p/2) and use broad index to invest. SPY and SH are good enough vehicles. We don't need leverage. Depemding on the trend of the market we buy or selll 1/2 position of SPY or full position of SPY or half position of SH or full position of SH or remain outside the market. That way you will be using all of $p and you will get most of the up trend and most of the down trend. Your return should be more than simply using SPY of you do it right. Now, the main question is how to tell the trend. Draw trend lines and do not doubt yourself is the way to do it. But your trend lines will depend on the period you take - 1 year or 3 year. Probably 1 yr daily is good enough. If you try smaller periods then you can catch faster trends. You may also try resistance and support horizontal levels for your decision. In that case it does not matter what period you are looking at. But whatever period you choose, stick with it. Most people get confused because they are looking at different periods in different websites by different people. I like the one-year period for both looking at trendlines and support and resistance. I hope money management will be useful to you.

The market behaved technically correctly

Now, let us not complain about the way market behaved today. In the first hour I thought the market was going to tank. I was ready to pull the plug on SSO and go to SDS had the market gone below 875 on SP500. But boy o boy that 880 is a good support. Thats what the charts are telling us. On the upside 905 is also a good resistance. I will sell all of SSO at the open tomorrow and go to the sidelines and wait. This market is not trending in any direction. So, no point in trying to guess what the next move will be. Technical analysis works only in a trending market. My day trading did not work today. I lost one clear opportunity to get long on FAS. I just doubted myself too much and the market ran away from me too far to enter the market. Thats how day trading is. Either you act fast and take the risk or you don't get to play. By the way, my returns since Feb 27 are almost the same as just buying spy and holding it without doing any of the readings or trading. That is a stunner! I always thought it was possible to beat market just by following the market trend lines. But the present market has me completely fooled. Maybe market timing does not work after all. We will see. Let the second part of the contest with SP500 begin.

Derelict to my blog

Sorry I have ignored my blog for a while. I have been spending a lot of time at xTrends blog. I think its a good portal for sharing ideas. A lot of people post links to their own blogs which I enjoy reading. Also, this day trading has got to stop for me. It is taking away much more time than I can afford at this time in my life. So, I will go back to my regular portfolio of SSO and SDS. The up trend in SP500 did not get borken today. Maybe tomorrow. I expect we will have a move up tomorrow and probably retest the highs before being sent home later in the month. I don't see any real stimulus sentimentwise for the bears to prevail. So, I will just stay put in SSO for now. Didn't get kicked out of SSO holdings today sine SPY did not touch 88.2 today.

One more day of day trading FAZ

Today FAZ was a good vehicle to trade. It remained range bound between plus and minus 2% of the opening price which was about 10% above Friday's close. So, it was a really very risky vehicle to trade for large gains and I went for small gain trades only. I made three round trips. Bought 10000 FAZ at 4.84 and then within 5 minutes sold for 4.86 making $200. Then I tried again at 4.77 but I did not like the trade and immediately placed sell order at 4.77. Then I tried at 4.72 and sold at 4.75 for $300. This gave me a total of $500 minus commissions of $60. While I was doing this silly thing I missed a real good signal to enter at around 4.75 and exit at 5.10. That would have given me a much better return. Well, tomorrow is another day. The best method that has worked for me so far is: (WARNING: Do not just copy this method. It just works with my personality. That is a big part of it. I get nervous when the prices go up rather than become greedy which is what I am supposed to be. I am very fearful when the prices start to go down and I am really really quick at taking a reasonable loss. I will not go beyond 10c loss on any of these trades since I know it will be very hard to make up for larger losses. What I am saying is that everyone has to figure out their own method that would suit their personality. Although I am following these rules, I am not rigid about them and give myself a little bit of flexibility, which would seem to go against what you read in books that one has to be rigidly disciplined. But so far I am positive for the week granted the first day was a really an outsized gain and I have not been able to repeat that performance. Still it has been OK. The best part of this trading for me has been that I do not have to worry about whether we are in a bull market or a bear market. The bad part is that this is a day trading. I think I can limit my trading to between 10:30 to 12:00 and maybe make enough for the day. That is my next goal.)

(For 2 or 3 cent moves use 1-minute chart and for larger moves use 5-minute chart.)

Step 1: Look at the slow stochastics for oversold condition. You know when it is coming. So you don't have to look at the screen all the time, just around the time the stochastics are down.
Step 2: Look at the momentum - make sure it is increasing. If negative then becoming less negative would be an increasing momentum. Must have positive slope.
Step 3: Look at MACD - confirm that it also has a postive slope.
Step 4: Place LIMIT BUY order at the highest price H of the last minute's candle. I tried with the closing price of the last minute's candle and it did not work couple of times. The price ran away from me and gave me a huge opportunity cost.
Step 5: See what you paid for the prices.
Step 6: Place a LIMIT SELL order at H+x, where x is obtained by some reasonable rule - (a) today I just used 1-minute tick spread which was between 2 and 3 cents. (b) A better one is to wait till the stochastics AND the momentum AND the MACD all tell you that the up move is over. On average you get 10 cents on FAZ nowadays in method (b) before retracement starts but along the way there are a lot of back and forth on a 1-minte chart and the Level II ticks will scare you and it is easy to get nervous about losing the gains.

I think step 1 can also come from a breakout point. But, there, one has to act really really fast. I tried to do that today and I couldn't. My limit orders were not filled. So far, my little trades are yielding good enough returns. I learnt to play this game by reading and watching the currency trading - they do it for steps of 0.01 cent, i.e. 1 pip. Entry has to be timed right in the upward momentum changing phase using 1-minute charts. The fluctuation in 1-minute charts is 2 to 4 cents on FAZ and the bid/ask spread is 0.01. So, when you buy, you are immediately 1c behind. The market has to move up 1c before you can breakeven. Therefore, you have to time your trade really very precisely in the increasing positive momentum phase. Probably the risk of losing is quite great unless you stay alert and cut your loss within 5 cents. I think one can trade between 10:30 AM and 1:30 AM with this method. You have to watch the overall market trend and the trend of FAZ or FAS whichever is tranding with the market. You definitely do not want to trade against the broader market. Also one has to make sure the size of the position is large enough that the tiny gains are not given away to the broker. Thanks Max for suggesting Interactive Brokers. I have openned an account there and maybe within 1 or 2 weeks I will be able to trade at a lower cost. Tomorrow I will try to see if I can do more 2 or 3 cent trades. I will try to limit myself to between 10:30 and 12:00 unless I see special circumstance developing. ALWAYS TRADE WITH THE PREVAILING TREND/SENTIMENT OF THE OVERALL MARKET!!!

Day traded using Breakouts in FAS/FAZ - terrible idea

I day traded using FAS/FAZ pair, this time using break outs of bases with a tight stop loss order. This method yields a profit of $700 on 6 round trips with 7 winning trades and 1 losing trade. The only losing trade today was when I tried to use FAZ in a counter-trend rally what looked like a breakout which quickly fizzled out. I would have lost even more had I not had a tight stop loss in place. This method compared vary poorly to my watching the stochastics for entry and watching the stochastics+momentum+volume+MACD for exit. The main reason for the poor performance of the breakout method is that after the breakout follows the consolidation period which often gets you back below the breakout. But this also signals failure of the breakout. So I needed to protect myself against that and that made me take really small profits. Sizes of winning trades were 0.01+0.09+0.11+(0.02*3/5 + 0.01*2/5) + (0.03*1/5+0.01*4/5) and the losing trade as -0.11. NEVER TRADE AGAINST THE MAJOR TREND!!! That is one lesson learnt this week. All through the week the counter-trend rally gave very small gains or outright losses. But, hey $700-Cost$120 = $580 is not bad at all on approx. $30,000 account plus the margin. That's like 2% net in one day. If I got 2% everyday then compound yearly return will be humongous: (1.02)^(250) for 250 trading days, basically doubling every month!! Clearly unsustainable. My first day with approx. 10% gain must have been really a fluke since so many large trades worked out. Today I found myself really being TOO CAUTIOUS and I will sell too soon only to find myself buying FAS at a much higher level since FAS was making the staircase every 1 hour or so. I would have made at least 10% had I just stayed in FAS regardless of drawdowns along the way. I was too fixated at limiting the draw down to no more than 1%. On Monday I will go back to my first method.


Meanwhile the hypothetical portfolio of SSO is doing incredible. There I am not arguing with the tape. My gosh even with lower than average volume we have explosive moves. From the bullish sentiment manufactured by the Obama administration I was expecting a 500 point day today. So I am a little disappointed. Remember jamming the tape and tape painting are old tricks of wall street. That's how they make money - just give a higher valuation to their assets and that means they have more money. Incredibly easy game - its real surprise how they can ever run out of money?

Not a good trading day in FAS/FAZ pair

I missed the big move in FAZ in the morning and spent the rest of the day fighting the tape with 21 trades, two of which were made by mistake on the order entry ticket. (Hey with that many trades you are bound to have a mixup. I want a system that has no more than 6 trades, and has >50% of what I catch here.)

Trade # 1s (sell): Mistake from yesterday unclosed FAS gave a surprise bonus to start the day with +0.55. Without this surprise I would have 1/2 the gain that I got today trading the market.
Trade # 2b/s (buy and sell): FAZ gave a puny +0.04. (I have got to learn to take profits in this method. I let a huge run disappear watching for the signal to show up.)
#3b/s: FAS gave -0.13. (I had to cover in a hurry to prevent more loss.)
#4b/s: FAZ gave +0.05. (Same happen again!)
#5b/s: FAS gave -0.07. (Decided that I am not going to play FAS today since overall market was bearish.)
#6b/s: FAZ with a tiny loss -0.03.
#7b/s: FAZ with another tiny gain 0.05.
#8b/s: FAZ with a really good midday rally +0.19. (Could have been >0.3 but I let the tape run down till it gave me a signal.)
#9b/s: FAZ with another small gain 0.075.
#10b/s: Made a mistake in placing buy order on FAZ, it should have been 5.92, instead I placed it on 5.85. I had to manually stop the loss at 5.70. Lost -0.15 points.
#11b/s: Tried to go back to FAS - a BIG MISTAKE - violated my earlier decision not to touch FAS today. Lost -0.13.

I played with 10 shares of FAZ for ever 3 shares of FAS to have the bearish bias of the day in addition to my deciding to stop playing with FAS altogether. The ratio of 10:3 FAZ/FAS made the money difference of approximately 3:5 since FAZ was around 5 and FAS around 10, which is a good idea when you are betting, i.e placing bets on the side expected to have higher win rate (poker anyone?). Therefore, today's haul was 3*0.22 + 10*0.225 = 2.91 units. I was playing with 1000 share units, so my take was $2,910. I am fully out today. Hey, not bad for a day's work. But it was really terribly frustrating and intense. Definitely not for the faint of heart. I also made some changes to my method.

1. Slow stochastics to get the signal to enter the market. But that was not very helpful today, so I used resistance on FAZ to place an order on the breakout to re-enter the market on FAZ. But there was no other resistance nearby to place an exit order. So I lost at least 0.2 points on FAZ exiting too late. There was a support on FAZ which I used once to limit my loss once I found my error in entering FAZ at 5.85 instead of 5.92, which would have been safely above a resistance at 5.84. I better relearn the Fibbonaci stuff, which will at least give some expectation from each move. Right now I don't have any expectations and I have to watch the market and charts and at the same time fight myself (like try to be fearful of losing the gains and greedy for getting a better price of entry - just the opposite of what you are supposed to feel.)

2. Exit was decided on the overall picture gained from looking at momentum, MACD and volume. Did not work out, since my return is definitely worse than yesterday's. Then I went to look at really more or less non-trending market after the initial push on FAZ. I found good support and resistances and used them to enter on breakout on FAZ and to limit loss.

I am going to do some more studies tonight. I definitely need a less strenuous system. I had to look at the screen practically all day again. I want to have a system where I can place some entry and exit orders and then forget the market for hours. Also I need another measure of how many points is enough for taking profits. I was watching the market and I noticed that after a rally of 1/2 hour or so the market takes a breather. Probably the average range of the sizes of these rallies will be the best indicator of the amount of profit to expect with each intra-day rally. Got to figure this out before tomorrow.

Day traded FAS and FAZ today

I day traded FAS and FAZ for a little bit of extra money since I had all day to myself today. Day trading is really hard. I will be using the same setup tomorrow. I had two windows with real time (5 minute - one day) graphs from Ameritrade, one for FAS and the other for FAZ. The secondary indicators are volume, momentum and slow stochastics (3,3). When the stochastics gives an oversold or overbought I check with the momentum and volume to be sure of the reversal and jump in with two orders in equal dollar value - one to buy FAS and one to sell FAZ or the other way. I started with a buy on FAZ at 10:15 AM ET, and then followed with sell FAZ at 10:40 AM and buy FAS at 10:41 AM, and then I continued this game. My gains on FAZ were +0.25, +0.05, -0.10, +0.05, +0.30 in share price and on FAS were -0.1, 0, +0.15, +0.85, +0.4 in share price. I ended the day with selling at the end about 10 minutes before close. The total number of trades was 5*2*2 = 20. My e-mail inbox was filled with confirmations. That will pose problem when writing tax return will come next year. The method generates too many trades, but the percentage of winning trades is decent and will prove to be useful. When you add up the gains then I got 9% from FAZ adn 12% from FAS. That is a really terrific return, but I had to watch the market every single minute. That's no way to live. Clearly +0.05, 0, and -0.1 returns are from false signals, but you do not really know at the time. Any idea to trim my signals will be very helpful. I will also try this on other pairs BGU/BGZ where you can play both sides. I was thinking you need a lot of fluctuation for this method to give good returns like today. I wouldn't mind trying this on SPY/SH pair since I found liquidity to be problem. My big orders were broken into too many smaller parts each time they got filled. Also with 20 trades Ameritrade made $200 from me, so have to play with large enough pool. Today was too much motion in FAS/FAZ and that is why the return is so high. I am not expecting this to repeat every day. I would be content with more down to earth return if it is consistent. I would be looking for other violent pairs to play this strategy on. So if you know of some, I will greatly appreciate it.

Money management in investment and the real return of a portfolio

1. First, the trend in the market is up. So, here I am 100% in SSO. My own real money portfolio does not use SSO. I use SPY and I went in today and brought up my SPY holding to 10% of total portfolio with a stop at $88.20. The rest of the portfolio is made up of permanent holdings of all kinds of dividend yielding large stocks, where I have been adding steadily. I always keep 50% of my total portfolio in SP500 mutual funds or cash when the market is below 200-day MA. I play with the other 50% in stocks. Right now the SP500 mutual fund part is totally in cash ever since we went below 200 day MA in Nov 2007. I didn't go short, which is a mistake in the hindsight. But hindsight is always 20/20. I was afraid of getting whipsawed, so I stayed out. I thought of getting back in when we crossed 50day MA but the economic condition really looks bad to me. I will wait till we cross 200-day MA before risking my solid base part of the portfolio.
2. Second thing I want to talk about is how net return of people's portfolio is way less than simple market return. Here is why: I have found that if someone has $X in savings, then he does not have all of X in the market. People usually play with a fraction of r*X and the rest (1-r)*X languishes in a bank account. Suppose they get a return y from the market and z from their bank account, then their return should be: y*r*X + z*(1-r)*X. I will bet that their return is less than SP500.
3. Third - Another problem that I find with people's fake portfolios is that they are nothing like their real money portfolio. Unless you put real money your portfolio does not count.
4. Fourth - Say, you have X dollars that you do not need for a long time (at least 5 years). Then I consider that investable property. Now, the cardinal rule of investing is: Do not lose more than 2% of the total portfolio (ie X) on any trade. How do you make sure of that? Suppose you have $100,000 to invest. Lets work out the example with SPY, which is around $90 right now with a supprt around $88. Now, 2% of 100000 is $2000. Therefore, if you were to put a stop loss order at 88, you stand to lose $2/sh. Therefore, you cannot have more than 1000 shares of SPY. I work with even more conservative scenario and don't place bets that have more than 1% loss in any trade. But, I will go up to 2% if the market is strongly trending.
5. A fifth aspect of trading is trying too many stocks. I have found that one or two is enough for trading and I will treat the rest as non-trading portfolio. I cannot keep track of more than 10 stocks. My trading portfolio has just SPY 500 which I sometimes short also. I haven't used SH since it has less liquidity.

6. Sixth item I want to talk about is: Recently I have started to learn spot currency market which trades 24 hours. They give you a lot of leverage, but you don't have to use the leverage and only trade EUR/USD or USD/CAD stable pairs. Say, you open an account of $10,000 then if you just trade 1 mini-lot you wouldn't be using any leverage. Clearly you should never go beyond 1:2 leverage, which will allow you to trade 2 mini lots. People trading with 1:10 or higher leverage easily LOSE all their money. Unless one has $100,000 or more in an account, they shouldn't even think of opening a standard account that lets you trade in regular lot of size $100,000. That is what I have been studying. The 24 hour liquid market is appealing to me. But I have not decided to give it a try yet. I am also afraid of really shady brokers. I have been looking at some, dbFX and fxcm are two that I have been looking at closely. I have a practice account with dbFX. Also a website www.babypips.com is a great place to learn currency trading or any kind of trading. I found their presentation educational and entertaining.

Plunge time as the Boy Plunger Livingston would say

Today, I plunged with both feet into the market. My first 50% was filled at 24.50. And then I immediately placed another order for 25.00. Even that got filled to my surprise. We are chasing the market now. The next stop would be 200-day moving average which I believe we will go through without any stop. There are a lot of bullish economic signals from all over the world. Even the bears are nimbling on stocks. Probably the market will keep going up for the month of May.

A WORD ABOUT TIMING THE MARKET AND BEATING THE MARKET: To date the performance of Simple SPY investing completely matched my in-and-out with 2xleverage. That totally defeats the work I put in to trade in and out. It appears that I have not been able to beat the market just like every body else who tries to time the market. I would be curious if anyone else has actually beat the market in this market.

No new action today

Nothing new to report.