Paper trading-
Short DDM 25.99 at 9:41 am; Covered 25.89 at 9:46 am. Gain 10 cents per share.
Long SRS 59.90 at 13:00 pm; Sold 59.73 at 13:02 pm. Loss 17 cents.
Short SRS 60.00 at 14:06 pm; Covered 59.75 at 14:07 pm. Gain 25 cents.
Long SRS 58.22 at 15:11 pm; Covered 58.33 at 15:14 pm. Gain 12 cents.
Long SRS 57.72 at 15:26 pm; Sold half 58.01 at 15:27 pm. Gain 29 cents. Sold remainder 57.88 at 15:29 pm. Gain 16 cents.
Short SRS 58.32 at 15:39 pm; Covered 58.60 at 15:40 pm Loss 28 cents
* this was a "rocks in my head" trade. I hit sell instead of buy, realized it 8 seconds later and covered. Good idea, bad execution! Should have been a 28 cent or greater gain.
Short SRS 59.26 at 15:42 pm; Covered 58.97 at 15:43 pm. Gain 29 cents.
Short SRS 58.99 at 15:44 pm; Covered 58.90 at 15:45 pm. Gain 9 cents.
Analysis: Clearly overtrading, nervous when I have a gain. Gotta take a valium at 9:15 am on trading days! Even I could hardly lose with the type of momentum moves on a day like today. Of course, there's no "losing" with paper-trading, which makes it easy. Also why I don't bother to post $ gains and losses. It really doesn't matter. It's PASS/FAIL.
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Addendum as of May 7th 2009
In an effort to quantify my progress from the very beginning, I am posting gain/loss data for Feb as I did later in March and beyond.
8 for 9; 89% winners. Gain of 85 cents per share.
Great start to your blog. I think I'm going to ease my way into trading with real money by doing a little like you - trade like 20% with the money account and then 80% paper trading just to get some more at bats in and work on the swing.
ReplyDeleteLike I said in my email. Thanks for scaring of Fear and Greed trader, everyone you follow puts up a wall after you start really tracking them!
Ha. Yeah, thanks a lot!
ReplyDeleteJust a taste of the markets every now and then with real money is the approach that I'm taking too. I'm really trying to not focus on dollars gained in my paper-trades but on dollars and cents per share and percentage of winners vs. losers. I figure about one thousand paper-trades will give me a statistically solid sample. At that point, if the winners are at 60% or greater and I am on the positive side in terms of dollars gained per share, Stage One of my training will be complete. I'll know then whether or not I can trade. Stage Two will be trying to achieve the same success with the real trading account; finding out if emotional baggage will affect my trading (fear and greed).
This way, I'm not fighting all my demons at once!