After 300+ trades in 2011, only ended up 5% lol

[gambler2075]

Well, with the biotech index up 22% YTD, it was inevitable that the bios would run up.

AMEX BIOTECHNOLOGY INDEX Index Chart - Yahoo! Finance

That being said, IMO we are close to a top... I am looking for a blowoff top to go short via TVIX (not truly short, but volatility can be somewhat correlated). Made a few thousand today trading 15K blocks of TVIX today, before I realized that my strengths lie in swing trades, not picking up pennies daytrading.

I have my eye on a few bios that I need to leg into, but sitting on mostly cash now.

g

[gambler2075]

Sweet, sold my 380K shares of BPAX at about 1.07 premarket ave, +108k

http://www.bilderload.com/daten/20120207bpaxIYXWN.jpg

bought 20K of NGSX at 0.77 for adcom brief in 2 days, should be fun, lol
need to load another 100K into a spec bio so not posting that one.

g

[KTP]

I have been trading my Nokia in my wells fargo account since I still have 60 something free trades left. Sold 10,000 shares today at $5.21 purchased yesterday at $4.99. These little $2000 nibbles really start adding up, and my trading account is looking nice so far this year. I love trading Nokia because of the strong support near $5 and the tendancy to swing 5% each week.

BTW, don't look at AFFY if you sold at $7 or so (trading at $10.70 today)

[YLTL_Dan]

I must say, I'm very surprised to see the number of non-conservative investors on this board. I realize it's only like five of you discussing, but I figured the overall sentiment of the forum would be buy and hold.

In my opinion, we need to realize there are a lot of newbies to the money world on this board, and we need to enlighten everyone on the dangers of day-trading. It sounds like some of you might be pretty good at it, but on average, 90% of day traders lose money.

I invest for the long term... knowing I'm not smart enough to time or trick the market. If you want to read more of my reasonings, check out my article on it.

[gambler2075]

Originally Posted by YLTL_Dan

I must say, I'm very surprised to see the number of non-conservative investors on this board. I realize it's only like five of you discussing, but I figured the overall sentiment of the forum would be buy and hold.

In my opinion, we need to realize there are a lot of newbies to the money world on this board, and we need to enlighten everyone on the dangers of day-trading. It sounds like some of you might be pretty good at it, but on average, 90% of day traders lose money.

I invest for the long term... knowing I'm not smart enough to time or trick the market. If you want to read more of my reasonings, check out my article on it.

I have been wanting to address something like this, and I have thought alot about how posting about trading wins can affect the non-trader.

First, let me say that I started posting on this messageboard because I got sick and tired about non-traders telling everyone that nobody can beat the market averages. How would they know? Just because they couldn't trade and don't know anyone that can trade, doesn't mean that NOBODY can successfully swing/daytrade. I also got kind of annoyed at people saying that daytraders are leeches on society and they don't contribute anything to society. I have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes from trading profits, and I beg to differ.

That being said, I have come to realize that it is better that everyone (mostly non-traders on this messageboard) believe this, because if non-traders start trying to daytrade, then they are almost certain to lose all of their money.

What people don't realize is that successful traders have had many years and thousands of hours of failure before (if) they ever became successful. I was no exception. I have been trading actively (like at least 40 hours per week on research/level 2/etc) for 11 years now. Cumulatively that is well over 10,000 hours of experience. I failed many, many times in my initial attempts, and back when 10,000$ was alot of money to me, I lost it quite a few times. If I had had 100,000$ I would have lost that too.

For anyone who is thinking about getting into trading, I would say (as I have told my friends in real life) that there is basically no way they are going to be successful as they have emotional flaws that interfere with being rational. And that they would lose all their money. If they are willing to spend 10,000 hours learning to trade and failing and losing their money many times, then they MIGHT have a chance (no guarantee) that they will take more money out of the stock market than has been put in.

I would also say that I have learned a valuable lesson, and lost a couple of friends in the process. I had a few friends who were interested in trying to trade, and I told them a few picks that I thought would go up significantly (they did) and yet I found that these people were unable to do what I was doing due to their lack of emotional control, and as a result they lost money, and I lost them as a friend. Never again.

I am currently debating if it is productive to have this thread at all... I feel that it is probably not. I still stand by my thesis that there are a few (and a very, very few) people that can beat the market, who are properly trained. The vast, vast majority of people on this website probably lack both the time, and the inclination to trade successfully. I also feel that the vast majority of the public has no idea how much time and effort it takes to (possibly) become a successful trader, or that it is even possible at all. That was the rationale for my original trader posts, and now that I feel I have accomplished that, I think I will stop posting.

g

[YLTL_Dan]

Gambler - great response, I respect that.

I'm in the "emotions ruin my ability to trade" camp. I was usually pretty good at picking the highs and lows... but unfortunately I would always buy at the highs and sell at the lows!! I don't consider day-traders leaches anymore than I consider bankers leachers (even small town bankers). It's all about the velocity and liquidity of cash flow.

Malcom Gladwell says it takes 10,000 hours to become a professional at something. It sounds like you've put in the time and continue to do so. Thanks for the explanation and the warning to the rest of the board.

[Mr Nice Guy]

Well Gambler, for what it's worth I enjoy reading your posts and would miss you. I wish I had better trading acumen so I could converse with you. I wouldn't be worried about what others think.

[KTP]

If I gave the impression that I am putting all of our money at risk each day doing swing trades, I would like to correct that.

We have around 70% of our investable assets in a 401K/Roth IRAs and those just sit in plain stock and bond index funds with a lot less volatility.

The remaining 30% I do admit to swing trading, but I don't have all of my eggs in one basket, and I swing trade only on stocks with a large cash balance and strong support. I mostly use Microsoft, Apple, Intel, Nokia, and Cisco. None of these stocks are going to pull an Enron anytime soon. I could never put $100,000 in a biotech trading for $1.22 before some make or break FDA decision, and thus I will never have the type of wins (and losses) of Gambler. I am excited when I make 4% in a week (if you compound that for 52 weeks it is over a 700% annual return!)

[Slug]

Gambler, don't leave it's kind of boring here without you (no offense KTP!). You clearly made your point the last time you left about the dangers of day/swing trading. At some point individuals have to take responsibility for their own actions.

KTP, I'm going to start watching Nokia. I really like stocks with dependable ranges. AFFY no longer qualifies.

All, like KTP I only trade a small portion of my portfolio. The VAST majority of my portfolio is in index ETF's, bonds, and long term stocks like (MO, BMY, DEO, and DUK). I typically speculate only on biotech stocks because it's related to my real job.

[Slug]

Originally Posted by gambler2075

bought 20K of NGSX at 0.77 for adcom brief in 2 days, should be fun, lol
need to load another 100K into a spec bio so not posting that one.

g

Are you expecting approval or just playing volatility? It doesn't sound good from what I'm reading. NGSX NeurogesX FDA Advisory Committee Behavioral Analysis » FDA Tracker

[KTP]

Originally Posted by Slug

KTP, I'm going to start watching Nokia. I really like stocks with dependable ranges. AFFY no longer qualifies.

It definately has been a consistent sawtooth bouncing between $4.95 and $5.50 for the past few months. I think now I have probably traded 100,000 shares, but each time only a few thousand for maybe $400 to $2000 profit. I keep 8,000 shares at all times just in case one day I wake up and it has popped to $8 or something. My cost basis on those 8K shares is now like $2 heh heh.

Some quick facts about Nokia:

Market cap: 19.4B
Cash: 14.96B
Debt: 6.98B
Dividend: 0.26 (about 5%, payable for shareholders of record in may 2012)

Positive things going for it: Microsoft is backing it for Windows phones, Gets about $8 to $10 royalty for each Iphone sold (so over 1 Billion from Apple this year), has Lumia 900 flagship phone releasing for AT&T 4G LTE network in March 2012 (should be good for a $1 pop).

As a way to dip your toe into Nokia while taking almost no risk, I suggest buying a few thousand shares and selling July $5 calls at the same time (this is called a buy-write and can be done in one transaction). I just checked, and at the current price of $5.20 per share, you can sell the July $5 calls for $0.73

Here is how this plays:

Say you wanted 2000 shares using this strategy.

Using the buy-write you would pay $4.47 per share, or $8940 total for the 2000 shares and the short position on the $5 July 2012 calls. Since you own the shares, you would be eligible for the $0.26 dividend in May, bringing your total cost per share down to $4.21. Book value on this stock is above that...heck, they almost have that much cash per share!

Of course you may get the shares called away from you before May, but if you do, you have made a profit of $0.53/$4.47 = 11.8% for a period of 3 months or so. If the shares don't get called away until July, you have made a profit of $0.79/$4.47 = 17.6% for a 6 month period.

Personally I can't think of a safer investment yielding those type of returns. With the amount of cash on hand, the patents, and the royalties, there is zero nada chance of this stock falling below $4 over the next 6 months.

[gambler2075]

Ok I am back. Sold my NGSX at 0.87 for the quick 2K$ from yesterday.

I'm long a bio in size but not sure if my buddies are in so I can't post it yet.
The past month had such a huge rally in the indices, and as a result the spec bios did too.

Year to date my portfolio is up about 95%... Really happy with that, as I was at about -10% last year... however I can't believe I left 150K$ on the table by not sticking with my original BPAX plan... was long 580K shares at 0.65... sigh...

I feel the markets are way overbought and I am seeing signs of spec bio blowoff tops, so I am proceeding with caution here.

g

[gambler2075]

Originally Posted by gambler2075

Sweet, sold my 380K shares of BPAX at about 1.07 premarket ave, +108k

http://www.bilderload.com/daten/20120207bpaxIYXWN.jpg

bought 20K of NGSX at 0.77 for adcom brief in 2 days, should be fun, lol
need to load another 100K into a spec bio so not posting that one.

g

Once again, I am starting to run into liquidity constraints as I many times cannot get in and out of stocks easily... as you can see from my trades yesterday, I kept smashing the bids with 40K sell blocks of BPAX, until it crumbled at 1.06... Had to go all the way down to sub 1$ to get out completely. It was much nicer when I didn't have to worry about these things. It is not just being right, but having enough people who are taking the other (hopefully wrong) side of the trade to let you get in and out.



g

Edit: I realize, looking at the average, it was not a 1.07 average, but the 108K$ profit was right.

[KTP]

Isn't that kind of expected when you trade after hours though? The volume is just not there...

[gambler2075]

Originally Posted by KTP

Isn't that kind of expected when you trade after hours though? The volume is just not there...

Yes, but this was not a typical EH session... the other problem is that the price was there... who knows what the price would have been if I had gotten out at 930am... I know I pushed the price around with my sells a bit, but I doubt I would have been able to get out where I did, during regular market hours.

I admit I do wonder sometimes what would have happened to the PPS of various stocks where I had a substantial position and got in or out, were I never to have traded it.

Actually the more challenging part of trading is trading with a smartphone and poweretrade-mobile on the snowboard lift... which I have done on many of the 10 days I have been snowboarding this season...

Actually I snowboarded mon-tue this week and will go thur-fri as well. today is my only day off

g

[KTP]

Originally Posted by gambler2075

Yes, but this was not a typical EH session... the other problem is that the price was there... who knows what the price would have been if I had gotten out at 930am... I know I pushed the price around with my sells a bit, but I doubt I would have been able to get out where I did, during regular market hours.

I admit I do wonder sometimes what would have happened to the PPS of various stocks where I had a substantial position and got in or out, were I never to have traded it.

Actually the more challenging part of trading is trading with a smartphone and poweretrade-mobile on the snowboard lift... which I have done on many of the 10 days I have been snowboarding this season...

Actually I snowboarded mon-tue this week and will go thur-fri as well. today is my only day off

g

I have traded while sailing in the Puget Sound. Nothing like being on a beam reach in 15 knot winds with the Space Needle off the port and executing a trade for a $1500 profit. For a tiny moment you feel like one of those 1%'ers.

[gambler2075]

Lol... good stuff... anyway, off to prepare for thurs-fri... don't forget to buy low and sell high

[Slug]

Originally Posted by gambler2075

I feel the markets are way overbought and I am seeing signs of spec bio blowoff tops, so I am proceeding with caution here.

I agree on the frothiness. I dumped AGEN today for a 15% gain (really fun chart today) and sold my YMI calls for 150%. Still long YMI.

[gambler2075]

Considering buying DMND here afterhours at 20.7... holy jeebus

Diamond Foods, Inc.: NASDAQMND quotes & news - Google Finance

[disneysteve]

Originally Posted by gambler2075

I have been wanting to address something like this, and I have thought alot about how posting about trading wins can affect the non-trader.

I am currently debating if it is productive to have this thread at all... I feel that it is probably not. I still stand by my thesis that there are a few (and a very, very few) people that can beat the market, who are properly trained. The vast, vast majority of people on this website probably lack both the time, and the inclination to trade successfully.

I, for one, hope that you stay and keep posting. I enjoy your input and feel it lends a pretty unique voice to the sight. Anybody who thinks they can just read your posts and duplicate your results is an idiot and deserves whatever they get. Will some people see what you're buying and decide to buy the same? Probably. They may make money. They may lose money. In either case, it isn't your fault or responsibility. People buy on blind tips all of the time. Heck, I've been guilty of that myself on occasion.

Stay around. Let those of us who don't have the time or training to trade live vicariously through your trading.