market speculation for October

[gambler2075]

I didn't know that AFFY was going to bounce around so much but I was pretty sure that it was underpriced in the high 5 area...

Ahh, good old VNDA. I remember watching it up like 800% that day they got the surprise approval for Fanapt... pretty amazing stuff. Haven't checked out SDRL... I'm kinda biased towards trading the bios... of course if I had just held my 80K shares of CHTP from 3 I would be up quite nicely now at 7.50... shoulda woulda coulda, hehe... I'm not touching it here, though.

g

[KTP]

Ah, so you are familiar with Vanda? I guess you would be, being the biotech king on here

I kind of wish I had bought a bit more at $8.80, considering it is up like 7% today. It just looked like a decent company with pretty good prospects.

[gambler2075]

AFFY is back to the high 6 area again, and I am itching to take profits again. 5-10% in a week or 2 is tempting... we will see. All of the bios are bouncing like crazy these past few days, from ARNA to CHTP...

g

I sold another 30,000 shares of AFFY at around 6.75 from my initial buy in the 5.25 range... realized ~45,000$ profits on those shares and about 80,000$ on the other 47K shares.

Still holding about 5K shares out of the 85K I used to hold. It will be interesting to see how strong this bio rally is, and if tax loss selling for AFFY kicks in.

g

[gambler2075]

Sold out of my last 5K of AFFY... this one could end up biting me in the butt since all of the bios are going crazy.

Bought a decent sized position in a beaten down colon cancer stock. It's too small to mention without being accused of pumping it so we'll see what happens.

g

[KTP]

Sold out of my last 5K of AFFY... this one could end up biting me in the butt since all of the bios are going crazy.

Bought a decent sized position in a beaten down colon cancer stock. It's too small to mention without being accused of pumping it so we'll see what happens.

g

I almost bought some shares of OXGN just to have the excitement of a lottery ticket. The shares are trading at $0.21 and might be delisted though, and that made me worried about being able to trade them freely. They are not broke yet (have about 6.5mil with a 20mil market cap) but are not really close to an approved drug. Since I didn't buy any I expect it will pop to a $1 over he next 6 months.

I bought some more SDRL instead.

[disneysteve]

Not a bio stock but thought I'd throw in my latest purchase. I bought CBOU this week. It seems to have good prospects and is small but positioned well to grow as the economy revs up and people start spending more on little splurges like that morning coffee drink. They issued new shares last week at $9.75 but the lowest I saw it trading was $10.00 which is where I got in. Closed at $10.15 yesterday so that's a good start.

[KTP]

Hmmm...I do love my morning coffee!

What made you pick this particular stock? Is it a brand you favor?

Just looking at the yahoo finance page fundamentals, I see that it is trading near a 5 year high, which isn't really a problem, except that it had sunk down to $1.50 in 2009 when the market tanked, which is a pretty huge drop.

It does have good growth prospects, some cash and no debt. Doesn't pay a dividend though.

Could trade at $15 sometime during this year maybe? Would be a tidy profit for you, but I don't know that I would hold it long term with the no divy, rather just sell when you hit a 50% return.

One sector I wanted to invest was lithium mining and a few other elemental mining. I figured with all of the world moving to Ipads and electric vehicles, lithium will become the new gold bubble. I can't find a lithium mining company that makes me happy though (reasonable PE, good profits, paying divy). I would also be happy with a company mining Indium, Yttrium and Neodymium, the Indium being utilized more and more in thin film solar cells, the Yttrium in electronics, and the Neodymium in the magnets for the electric vehicle motors. It is really time consuming to try and search out gems in the mining industry though.

[disneysteve]

What made you pick this particular stock? Is it a brand you favor?

Just looking at the yahoo finance page fundamentals, I see that it is trading near a 5 year high, which isn't really a problem, except that it had sunk down to $1.50 in 2009 when the market tanked, which is a pretty huge drop.

It does have good growth prospects, some cash and no debt. Doesn't pay a dividend though.

Could trade at $15 sometime during this year maybe? Would be a tidy profit for you, but I don't know that I would hold it long term with the no divy, rather just sell when you hit a 50% return..

Actually, I don't even drink coffee. I just think that Starbucks has been struggling and kind of lost their way recently. They dominate the market in number of locations but a small nimble competitor has a lot of room to grow. Caribou sells K-cups for Keurig brewers which is a rapidly growing market, for example, that Starbucks has not gotten involved with. And with only about 500 physical locations, vs. 18,000 for Starbucks, they've got a lot of room to grow.

I agree with not holding long term (which is why I posted this in the speculation thread). A 50% return would be fantastic. I'd be happy with a 20% return myself.

[gambler2075]

Well, I am probably not going to trade today to enjoy the New year, so for all intents and purposes, my YTD P/L is going to be the same for all of 2010 as it is today (barring some unforseen move by some of my stocks).

Ended the year about where I was in the middle-late part of the year... had a large drawdown, but passed that amount by the end of this year.

Realized profits of about 500K$ this year, with 385K in Etrade (top of the screenshot) and 108K in Bofa (bottom of the screenshot).

Open positions at +58,000$ unrealized, which I may close out at some point soon (no screenshot)

I have realized that it is much, much harder to generate the same returns with a larger account... (yes, this is obvious, right?) but it just requires a little more patience and slightly different strategies.

g

p.s. background: trading for 8 years, last 5 years about 8-12 hours per day, 4-5 days per week. I do think the 10,000 hour 'rule' is about right.

p.p.s. Happy New year, everyone!

[KTP]

congrats on a great trading year Gambler. I did pretty well too, up $38,150 in my IRA account from the beginning of 2010 as of today, but I did not have quite as much at risk as you did.

I couldn't resist jumping into the market a little bit today to catch some of the last minute tax selling related bargains. I got back into some Microsoft April 2011 $28 calls cheap and they are already heading north again. I have been in and out of that stock so many times I feel I should buy it dinner at least!

Another neat note. I just got an etrade notice that I have been upgraded for free to pro status because of my excessive trades lol. Optionshouse is far cheaper though...I should eventually move this account there also.

Happy New Year!

[MaxPowers]

I love your total commission fee. That is amazing.
I use zecco, which gives you 10 free trades a month if you have over 25k in your account. I will never use that many.

Also, I think I am too stuck on the buy and hold strategy. Some of the stocks I buy I know I want to hold, like some of the ETFs, MSFT, aapl, mcd. But other ones like SBUX which I have made a 150% profit, Im not to sure if I should keep going or get out. Same with some of the financials. BAC, C, AIG. These would be long term right? I have made quite a bit of profit from each, but am planning on holding for quite a while.

[KTP]

I love your total commission fee. That is amazing.
I use zecco, which gives you 10 free trades a month if you have over 25k in your account. I will never use that many.

Also, I think I am too stuck on the buy and hold strategy. Some of the stocks I buy I know I want to hold, like some of the ETFs, MSFT, aapl, mcd. But other ones like SBUX which I have made a 150% profit, Im not to sure if I should keep going or get out. Same with some of the financials. BAC, C, AIG. These would be long term right? I have made quite a bit of profit from each, but am planning on holding for quite a while.

If you are just planning to hold them long term, you could write covered calls pretty far out of the money to generate a bit more than regular buy and hold. It is sort of like leasing out your stock

for example, say you had 1000 shares of SBUX you bought at $20 that is now trading at $33. You could write 10 covered call contracts on those shares at $37 that expire July 2011 and you would instantly receive about $1000 cash. Based on the one year price target of SBUX, it is likely your shares would not reach this price by July and you would get to keep them along with the $1000. If they did get called away from you, then all that would happen is you walk away from the deal with 0 shares and $38,000 cash. Not a horrible scenario.

[gambler2075]

congrats on a great trading year Gambler. I did pretty well too, up $38,150 in my IRA account from the beginning of 2010 as of today, but I did not have quite as much at risk as you did.

Hehe, yes, I did have a ton of risk. But I have really decided on that being ok as I do have a well-paying job that is my fallback, were I to lose it all. Believe it or not, despite my username, I really do think about risk/reward alot. I actually am alot LESS risky now then I used to be. I used to trade on margin, but blew out my account a few times (way back when it was 10-15K$) and so now I stay away from margin. As a trader, I do have mental stop losses and profit targets, so the risk in holding for a 2-3 week period is alot less than holding for months to years. The biggest risk that I have is probably getting 'stuck' in a position... For example, with SPEX I had a position way too large for the market cap of the stock, and were I to try to get out I would be unable to do so, unless there were a high volume day (like the day that I did get out). The other problem with trading larger amounts is that you start moving stocks just by getting in and out of them. It was so much easier to make a greater percentage profit when I had 25K$ positions instead of 250K$ positions. Oh well.

I do have to take out money for taxes this year... unfortunately, I will probably have to end up paying nearly 200K$ in taxes for 2010, between my real job and my trading job. (Ouch, that really hurts to see it typed out)

As far as the commissions, yeah, it is kinda ridiculous... I should probably start hardball negotiations with Etrade to reduce them... or I'll threaten to leave

I don't think that trading is for everyone... I definitely think that trading in the ultra-aggressive style that I use is a very bad idea for people that A) have never traded before, or B) are trading with their retirement money.

I also think that it is somewhat foolish for non-traders to say "Nobody can beat the markets" by trading, just because that is what everyone believes. Yes, it is true that for the vast majority of people, they are better off putting their money into some mutual fund, but that doesn't apply for everyone.

g

[KTP]

I do think it is a lot easier for me to trade than you since my little bites don't move a stock at all, whereas you might have a 5% effect on a little bio if you tried unloading 300,000 shares in one day. That is a very good point you made.

I think the reason semi-intelligent trading works is that the market is not really a zero sum game like some people think. Sure, there are winners and losers, but in the grand scheme of things, value is created. Even in the biotech industry, some new drugs are approved each year which will have billions of dollars in revenue and justify the massive run up in price of the successful company. It is even better in the other less volatile sectors where a company can be tracked over decades and can easily be seen to have increased value. If a trader does enough research such that they are just 1% better informed than the random joe, it will play out in the long run if enough trades are made. It is really the same principle that casinos use to make money. On some tables, like craps, the house advantage can be really really small. They may run into winning or losing streaks but rely on the fact that eventually they will take your money. In the same way, a trader who practices risk management effectively and keeps each play small enough such that they win at 51% of the plays and lose at only 49%, will end up "beating the market", and it really is not luck.

I haven't been performing risk management although I have done a pretty good bit of studying of each company before I invest, so my returns are more luck based than yours probably are. If I can collect enough capital such that I can afford the trading costs associated with increased risk management, I could probably succeed at this long term. Not sure if I will get to that point, but it sure is fun!

[KTP]

Sold out of my last 5K of AFFY... this one could end up biting me in the butt since all of the bios are going crazy.

Bought a decent sized position in a beaten down colon cancer stock. It's too small to mention without being accused of pumping it so we'll see what happens.

g

Gambler....AFFY trading over $8 today...did you happen to get back in?