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Strategies & Market Trends : LastShadow's Position Trading -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SpecialK who wrote (596)	9/23/1998 6:23:00 PM
From: LastShadow	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 43080

Trading Daytrading I don't do a lot. Today it made sense. It also made about $2000 (after $90 for three round trades) on 300 shares each of MSPG, LCOS and XCIT. The open Position trades have been around for as little as yesterday and as long as 9/9: PETM 9/9/98 5.875 7.875 2 34.04% PIXR 9/21/98 36.5 45.875 9.375 25.68% AOL 9/21/98 95.5 115.25 19.75 20.68% AMD 9/21/98 17.25 20.9375 3.6875 21.38% ZITL 9/21/98 3.062 3.1875 0.1255 4.10% TEAM 9/21/98 7 7.5 0.5 7.14% DIMD 9/21/98 4.875 5.1875 0.3125 6.41% IFMX 9/21/98 4.875 5.0625 0.1875 3.85% PXD 9/9/98 14.312 14.75 0.438 3.06% PNF 9/21/98 2 2 0 0.00% At 300 shares of each that is about $10 grand profit after trading fees in 11 trading days. That doesn't count the other 18 stocks purchased and sold between 9/3 and 9/21 - those made about 12% after fees. My fees run an average of about $20/trade. Since the start of this account, I have had 32 stocks, one lost money, and one is breaking even. However, this has been a good month. I generally have about 15% that lose money or I exit flat. Last year I made traded 149 stocks. This year I will trade about 200. In terms on not getting excited about 1 or 2 points on a $100 stock, I couldn't agree more. However, Position Trading (which is, after all, what this thread is for) called for an entry on AOL at 95.5. Its now 20 points up and time to look for an exit. We talk about some daytrades here, and the Gaps are playable best intraday, but it is an end-of-day method. What makes the most sense for you really needs to be qualifieed by what tools you have at your disposal, what time you have to trade (intraday, occasional, end of day only) and what your risk and account size are. But you bring up a very valuable point. To make $100k a year one needs to make $400 a day minimum. One isn't going to do that easily on a $25k account. But then one shouldn't attempt to do that until they define a method that is manageable, profitable and consistent. Hopefully that is what we are trying to help others learn here. Thanks for refocusing us. lastshadow

To: SpecialK who wrote (596)	9/24/1998 10:31:00 AM
From: Jay Lyons	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 43080

DANGER WILL ROBINSON!! DANGER!! LONG RAMBLING POST AHEAD!!! Ketan- I'll take a stab at a few of your questions, but bear in mind that I consider myself a trading rookie...so take my thoughts with a large grain of salt. <<if you traded so many positions all in one day, doesn't that diversify too much? i.e. hard to track.>> Yes. I prefer two or three open positions at a time, but will go to a maximum of six. I use MB Trading, and their position minder makes it fairly easy to keep track of all of your open positions and react quickly to changes in those positions. <<you must have a lot of money to play with to have the broker fees be minimal, right?>> Like any any biz, undercapitalization can be a primary cause of failure. You must have enough money so that 1) you can take a loss and still be in biz and 2)you can take a loss and not have fear stress you out to the point that you can't trade effectively. I went to cash in my long term portfolio in early August...giving me more money to do short term trades with. Now like I said, I'm still a rookie, so on days when the gaps are saying to short, my trade size is so small that there's no way that I'm going to get back my transaction costs...that's a business cost, a tuition of sorts. I paper traded first, then I'll start learning with small amounts. On days like yesterday, I'll buy larger amounts, because I feel that my previous trading has given me reason to feel confident with the long trades. <<I have 26-24 winning %. Unfortunately, I have a loss for the year due mostly to the last 3 months, getting killed.>> I began doing this for a living at the beginning of this year, paper traded for about one month, then went for it. Like a lot of people, I could do no wrong. The don't "confuse brains with a bull market" adage was lost on me. I started experiencing losses in late July, came to the conclusion that I didn't know jack, and went back to paper trading a few weeks ago. You can't keep going back to the same well for water if it's gone dry. So why not put your money in the bank for now, get out a pencil and paper, and try to develope a stratagy that produces consistent profits and you're comfortable with? I can tell you thru personal experience that the people on this thread will go out of their way to help you learn. Jay