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Archive for the ‘trading results’ Category

This month was slightly profitable (+1.5%) gain on capital invested. I did not meet my objectives for the month. Good thing is I did not lose either. Please refer to the blog for a list of trades this month.

Areas I did well:

• Win% rate of 52% is good
• Average risk % of capital (1.0%) is good.

Areas I need to improve:

• Risk vs Reward ratio (1.1) - meaning, $1 dollar risked to earn $1.1 – not good.  This probably explains my high win% rate and low profit.

Overall this was not a good month for me as I was not focused because of personal matters. July has started on the negative side (big) as the market is in really bad shape at the moment. Message to myself:

< CONTROL YOUR RISK! >

I have been working really hard trying to develop a set of tools that would make my discretionary trading more mechanical, specially when comes to the risk management part.

For the record, here’s a snapshot of the major market indices today, not pretty:

$INDU - Daily

$INDU – Weekly – things could get really ugly from here…

Hope you had a good June – Good luck to you in July.

Overall a good month again and above my expectations.  The following table summarizes my results YTD:

Areas where I did well

• Net Profit % (or Gain) above my monthly target (2.5%)
• Win% rate of 58% is good
• Risk vs Reward ratio in line (1.4) - meaning, $1 dollar risked to earn $1.4.

Improvement areas

• Average Risk % of Capital (1.2 this month) is .1 above my limit (1.1) but still good
• I had 52 trades this month, which was the highest number of trades of all months — I could be overtrading

My focus this month has been mostly on work and also big changes in my personal life. It’s been busy but good. I have also been spending countless number of hours on the development of my new system “Sharp1″. My work on system generation is 80% completed and I’m now trying to finish a backtesting module, all in Excel.

List of Trades this Month

(click to expand)

Work and personal life has been keeping me busy lately, not much time to look at the markets and post. I am parked on 3 long positions on my discretionary trading: LH, CP.TO and TD.TO. Both TD and LH as positive and CP is at break-even level.

TD Bank (TD.TO) - Spiked above the 200dma and looks well positioned to continue upwards.

Canadian Pacific (CP.TO) - I’ve got in a bit late the second time on this but that flag looks promising.

Markets Review

The Nasdaq is showing a lot of strength when compared to the Dow Jones. Please see the following charts. The index charged ahead after a quick bounce on the 200dma and is now attacking the previous high. The Dow Jones (INDU) is attacking the 200dma but could bounce back over the next few days. It should continue upwards once it clears it.

Trading Summary Month to Date (MTD)

So far it’s shaping like another winning month. My trading results tracking is getting a bit complicated given that my SharpSystem1 trades are all mixed. So far this month I’m up 5.3% gain over invested capital — last month I ended at at 15.2% which was an exceptional month. The following as screenshot of my trades so far this month.

Peter - if you are reading this post, I have to apologize for not reporting on the BAM short trade but as you see above I closed it on 05/02/08. When looking at my posts I had some duplicated and some that never made to WordPress. I use Windows Live Writer to post and it has been very bad since I upgraded to the new version of WP. I’m not sure where exactly you got in on BAM but I’d keep a close stop at this point, unless you plan to hold it for over 20 days. Look at the following chart - note how BAM is over extended above the bands…. stocks tend to go back inside the band and sometimes very abruptly.

Have a great long weekend folks.

This has been my best month ever so far in 2008. My objective is to make between 4-5% a month on average during the year while maintaining my risk % of capital at 1.5% tops.

This month’s results are way above my target and I’m obviously happy about it but this is not the time to brag, I’m not selling anything on this site. My sole objective here is to be disciplined, record all my trades an most importantly learn from my mistakes.

Things I have done right this month

• Didn’t guess my patterns, they are starting to become more and more clear when I see them — the key one: Failed to Drop or FTD — it’s a cash cow machine, try it.
• My Average Risk % of Capital was 1.5% on average
• My Win/Loss ratio - 59% is very good.
• I cut my losses short - no single trades with losses above 5% (that’s GOOD)
• I feel my method has been gaining consistency and I am probably doing a better job at managing my risks. Blogging and receiving comments on my trades has also been invaluable in making me a better trader.

Things I have to improve

• I said my Average Risk % of Capital was 1.5% on "average" — when looking at my trades (below) I saw a number of trades where I risked too much — that is WRONG!
• My risk x reward ratio was 1.4, which is better than the previous months but is still very low, meaning I’m risking 1 dollar to earn 1.5… it should really be above 2.0. Is this related to my discretionary trading system? It can only be sustained if I keep my Win/Loss ratio at above 53% which doesn’t seem to be a problem.
• Exits are still a bit premature (BAM-A.TO, SU.TO) - have to refine my exit method and stick to it.

Trades this Month - The following are my trades for this month. Most profitable trades are highlighted in yellow. There is a corresponding post in the blog for each one of the trades.

Hope you had a good month too! I have received a number of emails asking about when I will launch my subscription services and the answer is not until end of this year. Will keep you posted.

Good luck to you tomorrow.