The Official Trading Thread

looks like FNMA blew up in my face. Started my trading account with around $12k with a $6k investment in FNMA at $2 and $5k in DDM. sold all DDM at small loss, sold some FNM on the way up, account peaked at $16k on Tuesday's close. Now only up $2.5k assuming FNM stays above 2.90 (which is unlikely). I got greedy,

Yesterday bought 5 contracts of deep ITM calls for JNJ (1 contract) and AXP (4 contracts) with 1 month expiration

Stock market sucks for making money but I hate watching it go up and not being a part of the action. A nice aff. paycheck took care of those bitcoin losses from april so it's all good.
 


Does anyone following this thread use Tradestation to program quant strategies and trade based on their signals?
 
Put in a tiny buy order for FNMA @ Limit $1.50. Might not get filled...

Also, not sure why the quote for FNMA is like 10% higher in my brokerage account than what I'm seeing on websites...
 
r3p1v said:
Put in a tiny buy order for FNMA @ Limit $1.50. Might not get filled...

Also, not sure why the quote for FNMA is like 10% higher in my brokerage account than what I'm seeing on websites...
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It's a bulletin board stock. Think of it as the popups/malware of capital markets - except you have to put a pony up more first to speculate in a market rife with buttrape and scarce protection.

You want to make money in penny stocks? Be Timmy Sykes. There are no investors there and no saving you from the operators.
 
r3p1v said:
Put in a tiny buy order for FNMA @ Limit $1.50. Might not get filled...

Also, not sure why the quote for FNMA is like 10% higher in my brokerage account than what I'm seeing on websites...
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otc stocks on sites like yahoo finance have a 15 min lag from the actual quote.
 
crap ...stocks crash and I lose $370.. the dow lost 100 pts in the final 15 minutes
Only up $1100 on the entire account due to FNMA gains. all option positions except one in the red
a pretty bad way to end a pretty lousy week
 
Sorry for the lack of updates. I am currently in Hawaii for vacation. Landed two days ago. This week was a strong week for me even though I was doing all my trading via mobile. Literally been shorting any pop this week and considering that we 4% from our earlier highs this week..you know that it went pretty well for me.

DtpO0RU.jpg


Pics for days from this week. Gain for the week is a bit over $5,000. If I had access to my PC the whole time then it would have definitely have been 3-4x higher. Just that when I am on a plane for 11 hrs straight and taking tours to areas of the island with no internet, all risk needs to be kept at minimum levels.

Let me say that I am very bearish on the markets. The past two weeks have been the worst performing back to back weeks for the market this whole year. I'll try to give an in depth look at the market and various stocks later this weekend.
 
Stock market (more specifically daytrading or swingtrading) still for suckers and anyone that plays in it long enough will lose it all. For example, I bought a single deep in the money call option on telsa and i still lose $120 on it within an hour. I buy the most conservative option possible (the same as buying 100 shares pretty much) and i lose a good chunk of my investment in less time than it takes to compose this reply. Now imagine someone buying 10-20 contracts of tesla on-the-money . They would be down $1000's within 60 minutes. This is even after the stock has fallen from 110 to 92, when a 'buy the dip' strategy would seem reasonable. Three days ago I buy a single call option on Disney, the CEO makes some negative remarks at a 'private' conference, stock tanks, I get out at $66 with a loss of $150 and now it's at 62. P&G, MMM,..the list goes on. $100-200 losses everywhere.
Right now I have a six thousand dollars in positions for 'play money'. But god help anyone who has their life savings trading. There are a few bloggers who do this professionally and i can't imagine a worse way to make money.
 
cpauser said:
Stock market (more specifically daytrading or swingtrading) still for suckers and anyone that plays in it long enough will lose it all. For example, I bought a single deep in the money call option on telsa and i still lose $120 on it within an hour. I buy the most conservative option possible (the same as buying 100 shares pretty much) and i lose a good chunk of my investment in less time than it takes to compose this reply. Now imagine someone buying 10-20 contracts of tesla on-the-money . They would be down $1000's within 60 minutes. This is even after the stock has fallen from 110 to 92, when a 'buy the dip' strategy would seem reasonable. Three days ago I buy a single call option on Disney, the CEO makes some negative remarks at a 'private' conference, stock tanks, I get out at $66 with a loss of $150 and now it's at 62. P&G, MMM,..the list goes on. $100-200 losses everywhere.
Right now I have a six thousand dollars in positions for 'play money'. But god help anyone who has their life savings trading. There are a few bloggers who do this professionally and i can't imagine a worse way to make money.
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If you are consistently loosing money, you should not be trading with real money. Use a paper trading account, or write down the trades you would be making but don't actually do the trade.
 
cpauser said:
I buy the most conservative option possible (the same as buying 100 shares pretty much) and i lose a good chunk of my investment in less time than it takes to compose this reply.
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There is nothing remotely conservative about taking option positions, no one in their right mind would advise a small retail account (Ameritrade wouldn't even let you) to do this kind of trading, and wtf is this option that's just like buying 100 shares of stock? If you buy 100 shares of a stock you can shake off a bad 15 minutes of performance, there's no money to be out of.

While I don't exactly understand what mGrunin is doing (easier to read his p/l) - he is hedged - being hedged is pretty much a common denominator of any option strategy, otherwise you're left vulnerable to market conditions outside your control that can easily wipe you out. That's the reasons options exist in the first place, to hedge against larger positions in the underlying security.

Buy the 100 shares next time. Or better yet, buy and sell an index.
 
cpauser said:
Stock market (more specifically daytrading or swingtrading) still for suckers and anyone that plays in it long enough will lose it all. For example, I bought a single deep in the money call option on telsa and i still lose $120 on it within an hour. I buy the most conservative option possible (the same as buying 100 shares pretty much) and i lose a good chunk of my investment in less time than it takes to compose this reply. Now imagine someone buying 10-20 contracts of tesla on-the-money . They would be down $1000's within 60 minutes. This is even after the stock has fallen from 110 to 92, when a 'buy the dip' strategy would seem reasonable. Three days ago I buy a single call option on Disney, the CEO makes some negative remarks at a 'private' conference, stock tanks, I get out at $66 with a loss of $150 and now it's at 62. P&G, MMM,..the list goes on. $100-200 losses everywhere.
Right now I have a six thousand dollars in positions for 'play money'. But god help anyone who has their life savings trading. There are a few bloggers who do this professionally and i can't imagine a worse way to make money.
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Pretty obvious you don't know what you're doing, you might want to educate yourself more if you're going to try trading options.

[ame=http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0735204659]Options as a Strategic Investment: Lawrence G. McMillan: 9780735204652: Amazon.com: Books[/ame]
 
I'm pretty sure I know what i'm doing.Because these are very deep in the money calls I'm taking on much less risk than I would in the past, but if the dow drops 300pts and you have calls (or any long position) you're going to lose money. It's unavoidable unless you have the foresight to stocks that are unaffected. The magic number is $12000, or how much I started with. Right now at $13100. The dow has fallen 300 pts since I opened my account, so by that metric i'm doing well. Yesterday bought some best buy at 27.19. Sold some my calls this morning. 5 contracts remaining, all with losses. This market needs to rally.
 
cpauser said:
I'm pretty sure I know what i'm doing.Because these are very deep in the money calls I'm taking on much less risk than I would in the past, but if the dow drops 300pts and you have calls (or any long position) you're going to lose money. It's unavoidable unless you have the foresight to stocks that are unaffected. The magic number is $12000, or how much I started with. Right now at $13100. The dow has fallen 300 pts since I opened my account, so by that metric i'm doing well. Yesterday bought some best buy at 27.19. Sold some my calls this morning. 5 contracts remaining, all with losses. This market needs to rally.
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so you think buying deep in the money calls is conservative? that they are less risky? that's awesome.

sometimes i bet football. i only bet the heaviest favorites out there, and i bet them to win outright. no way i can lose because i'm conservative. that's my secret.

i don't know what all those other fools say is so hard, but you & me? we got options and gambling figured out in like 2 days.

pow-o.gif
 
mGrunin, what do you think of stock picking newsletters, specifically https://thecheapinvestor.com ? I saw their ad on investopedia I believe and it obviously worked on me.

Seems to have an unbelievable track record (supposedly picked 241 of 243 winners over 50 months), rated #1 newsletter by bloomberg a couple years ago, and I can't find any bad reviews really.

I would think the real key with a newsletter is timing, knowing when to exit, I know this one doesn't give you exact times for that.

But I'm curious as to your thoughts, I think it is generally for plays that are longer than what you do most of the time, but its hard to argue with it's track record.
 
Roman Holiday said:
supposedly picked 241 of 243 winners over 50 months
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that's facepalm-worthy. absolutely anyone who's spent any time in the industry at all doesn't need to investigate that claim to know they are either outright lying or manipulating the definition of a "winner". the claim is so comical there isn't much more that can be said about it.

having spent time in both the gambling and trading worlds, i can say the charlatans prey on the "hopers/believers" in both industries the same way, and you just wonder how anyone gets sucked in by it, but god bless 'em they do.
 
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