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

[KTP]

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.

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[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.

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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.



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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]

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

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[KTP]

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]

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]

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.

[Slug]

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

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

Ack! From 92 in Sept. to this. Where is the bottom?

[gambler2075]

Long CHTP, in decent size, from 4.94 average. May modify position at any time.

FDA Adcom briefing docs released feb 21, which could be a negative, but imo there is a good chance of a positive adcom panel vote Feb 23, which would gap the price up. May hold for either the runup into adcom review, or beyond.

Here's some DD:
Chelsea Therapeutics: Likely to Double on Safe, Proven Asset - Seeking Alpha
(note this is from good 'ol Shkreli in 2011 (google him))

http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/108/6/724.full.pdf

L-DOPS - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Disclaimer: If you buy CHTP because of this post, your favorite molecule will become L-dihydroxyphenylserine. And you may lose money.

g

[gambler2075]

Ack! From 92 in Sept. to this. Where is the bottom?

IMO that 20.7 was very likely it.

That being said, no position, and don't plan on getting one.

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[KTP]

The one tiny complaint I have about the biotech threads is that only a couple of you guys understand them, because you don't post very much detail on how a company you are interested in might succeed or fail. Some of them are easier to understand...like I could grasp that AFFY at $5 was a decent risk, since it had $5 in cash on hand, but for any other XYZ biotech that you are planning on putting at risk $200,000, I would like to hear why you think the FDA decision will go one way or the other. It is interesting and makes it more fun to track the results. If you don't have time to go into that type detail, I understand.

[gambler2075]

I of course would want to know these things if I were reading this thread, however, I will state that over the years I have been trading, I have learned certain things about stocks that might make them more likely to move one way or the other. And lots of things that don't tend to correlate with stock movements. And, as trading is a zero-sum game, if you look at things from my perspective, the more my techniques are known, then the less effective they will be. I can tell you that before I go into a long position I have done at least 40-100 hours of fundamental research, which usually comes to about 15-20 pages of text (I have sent these things to my trading buddies many times in the past). Also the research that is publicly available is typically very trivial. In order to do deep DD you need to seek out basically all information that is available anywhere on the internet to really understand the DD. Most of this information never becomes published for the masses (yahoo finance, google finance, seekingalpha, etc), in my experience.

In other words, I have to decline to elaborate what specifically I am looking at in this situation. I will throw out those 4 letters but it is up to anyone to decide if they want to buy, sell, short, or sit on the sidelines.

Sorry.

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