Sold 1 gold at 1881
Bought 2 platinum at 1879.5
This is a spread trading and I will likely make money when gold goes down. There's no stop for this and I'll add if it gets to -50, -100 pts etc...
Monday, September 5, 2011
Friday, September 2, 2011
Give another day
I'm looking to sell Nat gas puts. I was looking at 3.75 puts for $1530 a few days ago. I think it got to $1400ish and NG went up. Today NG tanked, but 3.75 puts was no where like a few days ago because when NG went up, the premium evaporated very quickly if this makes sense. Over lunch our, I placed an order to sell $4 put for $2030, but then with the sharp up and down in 2 days, I decided to wait out. I think what will likely happen is to test the low or even lower, consolidate before it goes up. I might get 3.75 puts above $1500.
On the other hand, I'm so close to sell Gold and buy Platinum at the same time as a spread. I think Gold might test the high just to see if they can run any stops and scare people away. I'll take advantage of this move and create liquidity for them. It maybe when Gold goes between 1950 and 2050. After that I think it'll crash as a typical inverted V format followed by a looong stagnation.
I'm also looking to sell Corn and buy Wheat at the same time. I think the current level is good, but I think there's still more upside to go for corn. I'd like to execute this trade when corn is likely to go down.
As far as indexes go, I think it'll test the low, but what do I know.
Friday, August 26, 2011
Back in trading
I opened an account at RJO. I used to trade through TradeStation, but their clearing firm was RJO anyway. TS offered a platform called TS4.0 for pit trading contracts, which is essentially the same as RJO Vantage with minus a few nice features, so I thought I should go with RJO directly. The commissions are not as cheap as tradestation, but I'm ok with $5 for futures options as I'm not doing lots of trades anyway.
I placed an order for nat gas. It needs to come down a bit more though. I'm also looking at gold / platinum and corn / wheat as well.
It's good to be back.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
I wouldn't touch.
Gold, silver, oil etc are dropping. It sure looks like a bargain compared to where it was a few days ago or based on the trends. However, I do not think this is time to get back in. When markets are trending up, the down move should be slow even if by nature it's faster to go down than up.
NG is coming down again, probably due to the inventory report and more, but I'll wait as well.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
All 20/20
It's been a long time since my last post due to family issues. I'm even not sure if anyone stills visits here.
I made an important decision in the mean time. I don't think day-trading fits my personality. I think I can make it work eventually, but is it worth it? I spent way too much time. For some people, yes, but not for me. I have a full time job with a family to support. With health-insurance, house payment and too much uncertainty, I don't think I can gamble. If I were a single, I'd do it in a heart beat.
I finally rolled my construction loan for the new house to a permanent loan. I was so attempted to 5-year or 7 year adjustable mortgage because I know I'll probably move, but at the last minute, just in case, I might still stay, so I decided to go with 30 year fixed.
The whole refinance was a joke. Since my property is something you'd see in West coast, certainly not in Midwest, banks considered this as an unusual property. It has lots of green and modern building features and everybody said, 'oh great', but when it comes to property value, 'oh, we just can't find any matching house, so we can't give you value.'
The first appraiser's value was $170K cheaper than the second appraiser. The second appraiser's value is about $75K cheaper than what I spent, which was still fine. But I question about the frist appraiser's work. Sure radiant heated floor on both upper and lower levels, solar panels, insulated concrete forms, R-9 windows with krypton etc are not popular, but I was thinking if no one starts appraising the value of the house correctly about green building, no one would build that way.
Since I put a lot of cash down during construction, I wanted to a cash-out up to 80% of the value, but with so much frustration with banks, I was glad to be able to refinance and get some cash out. Hopefully, a few months later, I'll do a HELOC for more cash after my credit score goes back up. There are still a lot to be done around the house, but man, I'm exhausted, so I'm not going to worry about it for now.
Anyway, by the time the little cash-out arrived to my bank, Nat gas price was around $3.8. I was actually eying on NG for a while. I saw it dipped around $3.75, and it sure seemed like a bargain to me, which was why I was trying so hard to take a good cash out. The risk was greater since my account was not big as before, I didn't have a lot of room to work with. I could start selling $4 puts and maybe $3.5 puts, but not more than that due to the size of account.
This time, instead of using RJO as a broker, I just put everything to ThinkOrSwim. The ACH took 3 days and boy, during that time NG shot up to already 4.25. The April contract's premium was diminishing so fast, so if I wanted, I had to go in for May contract. In 20/20, if my money was clear a day earlier, it would have been an easy $2K trade. But all 20/20, isn't it. I was then looking at May 4.25 put, but I decided to wait. When I don't get in, markets go in my favor, right? As NG went up, the inflated value of puts got deflated, so puts were no longer attractive. Again, it would have been a nice $1K trade. 4.5 puts are too risky, so I moved on.
I then looked at AAPL. I wanted to use ThinkOrSwim (TOS), so that I can trade both futures and stocks. I love Apple products. I keep an eye on how iPhone buyers turn into Mac, iPads etc. I know how hard it was to buy iPad2. Fundamentally a very strong company in my opinion. The last time I traded AAPL, it was around $150. I made good money, but certainly I didn't hold until $350.
Chart was actually pretty good too. It was drifting down towards to earnings and it even dipped below a strong support level. To me, it's not a new leg down. It's more for stop-runs. Everybody knows stops were sitting there below a support. Even I'd try to see if I can run some sell stops because I can always keep selling and dump everything to buy them back.
This was a perfect candidate for earnings options play. Premiums for calls were low because it was heading down for a period of time. In the worst case, if I bought an $1K option, based on AAPL's volatility, my max risk was about $500 whereas my gain was about $1500 per contract. But at the end, I just chickened out because of bad memories on earnings. Again all 20/20.
I have one more. The last week, I started looking at Silver (SI). Not on buying side, but to sell side. I saw SI reached around 50 and it started doing topping patterns I saw before. I had a few options. Buy puts or sell calls. I especially like selling call side because of premium inflation on call side. Out of money calls were going for some crazy amount! SI didn't necessary had to go down, if it just hung around, I would have made good money.
Of course, I didn't want to sell calls naked due to crazy risk in SI. My strategy was to sell 50 calls and buy 51 calls. That way, if SI kept going up, my max loss would have been $1 whereas premium I could have collected was $3500. Its reward:risk was not as good as AAPL, but with options' spread, it's always the case. So I went to TOS, and placed an order. For some reason it kept rejecting my order saying I couldn't sell 50 calls. I do have permissions to sell and I have enough funds for margin. I never traded futures options through TOS, so there must be wrong with settings. However, jinks or not, I just decided not to bother this trade. SI was around 49-50 at that time. Today, sure enough, it's being traded at 39.
This only money I made during the last month was about $1K playing my retirement account. I've been betting on real estate securities. Everybody is so pessimistic about real estate. I'm pessimistic too, but I'll do the opposite. I'm not risking too much anyway.
There goes all my 20/20 stories. I'm not sure what my next plan is, but I'll report back.
I made an important decision in the mean time. I don't think day-trading fits my personality. I think I can make it work eventually, but is it worth it? I spent way too much time. For some people, yes, but not for me. I have a full time job with a family to support. With health-insurance, house payment and too much uncertainty, I don't think I can gamble. If I were a single, I'd do it in a heart beat.
I finally rolled my construction loan for the new house to a permanent loan. I was so attempted to 5-year or 7 year adjustable mortgage because I know I'll probably move, but at the last minute, just in case, I might still stay, so I decided to go with 30 year fixed.
The whole refinance was a joke. Since my property is something you'd see in West coast, certainly not in Midwest, banks considered this as an unusual property. It has lots of green and modern building features and everybody said, 'oh great', but when it comes to property value, 'oh, we just can't find any matching house, so we can't give you value.'
The first appraiser's value was $170K cheaper than the second appraiser. The second appraiser's value is about $75K cheaper than what I spent, which was still fine. But I question about the frist appraiser's work. Sure radiant heated floor on both upper and lower levels, solar panels, insulated concrete forms, R-9 windows with krypton etc are not popular, but I was thinking if no one starts appraising the value of the house correctly about green building, no one would build that way.
Since I put a lot of cash down during construction, I wanted to a cash-out up to 80% of the value, but with so much frustration with banks, I was glad to be able to refinance and get some cash out. Hopefully, a few months later, I'll do a HELOC for more cash after my credit score goes back up. There are still a lot to be done around the house, but man, I'm exhausted, so I'm not going to worry about it for now.
Anyway, by the time the little cash-out arrived to my bank, Nat gas price was around $3.8. I was actually eying on NG for a while. I saw it dipped around $3.75, and it sure seemed like a bargain to me, which was why I was trying so hard to take a good cash out. The risk was greater since my account was not big as before, I didn't have a lot of room to work with. I could start selling $4 puts and maybe $3.5 puts, but not more than that due to the size of account.
This time, instead of using RJO as a broker, I just put everything to ThinkOrSwim. The ACH took 3 days and boy, during that time NG shot up to already 4.25. The April contract's premium was diminishing so fast, so if I wanted, I had to go in for May contract. In 20/20, if my money was clear a day earlier, it would have been an easy $2K trade. But all 20/20, isn't it. I was then looking at May 4.25 put, but I decided to wait. When I don't get in, markets go in my favor, right? As NG went up, the inflated value of puts got deflated, so puts were no longer attractive. Again, it would have been a nice $1K trade. 4.5 puts are too risky, so I moved on.
I then looked at AAPL. I wanted to use ThinkOrSwim (TOS), so that I can trade both futures and stocks. I love Apple products. I keep an eye on how iPhone buyers turn into Mac, iPads etc. I know how hard it was to buy iPad2. Fundamentally a very strong company in my opinion. The last time I traded AAPL, it was around $150. I made good money, but certainly I didn't hold until $350.
Chart was actually pretty good too. It was drifting down towards to earnings and it even dipped below a strong support level. To me, it's not a new leg down. It's more for stop-runs. Everybody knows stops were sitting there below a support. Even I'd try to see if I can run some sell stops because I can always keep selling and dump everything to buy them back.
This was a perfect candidate for earnings options play. Premiums for calls were low because it was heading down for a period of time. In the worst case, if I bought an $1K option, based on AAPL's volatility, my max risk was about $500 whereas my gain was about $1500 per contract. But at the end, I just chickened out because of bad memories on earnings. Again all 20/20.
I have one more. The last week, I started looking at Silver (SI). Not on buying side, but to sell side. I saw SI reached around 50 and it started doing topping patterns I saw before. I had a few options. Buy puts or sell calls. I especially like selling call side because of premium inflation on call side. Out of money calls were going for some crazy amount! SI didn't necessary had to go down, if it just hung around, I would have made good money.
Of course, I didn't want to sell calls naked due to crazy risk in SI. My strategy was to sell 50 calls and buy 51 calls. That way, if SI kept going up, my max loss would have been $1 whereas premium I could have collected was $3500. Its reward:risk was not as good as AAPL, but with options' spread, it's always the case. So I went to TOS, and placed an order. For some reason it kept rejecting my order saying I couldn't sell 50 calls. I do have permissions to sell and I have enough funds for margin. I never traded futures options through TOS, so there must be wrong with settings. However, jinks or not, I just decided not to bother this trade. SI was around 49-50 at that time. Today, sure enough, it's being traded at 39.
This only money I made during the last month was about $1K playing my retirement account. I've been betting on real estate securities. Everybody is so pessimistic about real estate. I'm pessimistic too, but I'll do the opposite. I'm not risking too much anyway.
There goes all my 20/20 stories. I'm not sure what my next plan is, but I'll report back.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
A new portfolio
I'm going to start either one or two new portfolio. One will be based on price action and technical analysis and the other one will be fact based. Both of them will have pretty small accounts, say $5K each.
I've been working with my good ole trading friend for a short term trade and it's about time to go live. He has just so much passion on trading and he's a kind of person who never gives up. He can sit in front of computer for hours and hours until he finds something profitable. He is constantly looking for a way to increase his probability.
While I built my house, he kept asking me when I'd be back to trading. He doesn't mind sharing what he's been doing and how he's been making good money consistently. He's always encouraging me saying 'we' can do this. Simply a nice person who can't say no if I ask any.
Even if I still have a lot of things to finish around the house, I did let him know, I'd like to come back on trading. Over the past few days, he shared everything he does and I spent a few nights with him with live charts.
What I'll trade is euro currency (6E). Euros simply move a lot compared to ES. If ES moves 10 points (or 40 ticks), it's probably a good day to trade. For euro, it's not hard to see 100 pips up and down, which is equal to about 400 ticks. This will work pretty well because I can get up early and trade while I have to miss US market hours to trade ES anyway. What I'm looking forward is about 3 small winners: 1 fixed target and 1 runner.
Another method is completely fact-based. I'm a big fan of fact based trading. Options selling was certainly one of fact based trading methods. If I didn't spend too much money on construction, I would have been still selling options just like Nat gas and Lumber. Nat gas would have been a killer altho it's 20/20 now. This method is pretty simple. Looking at different markets, I'm trying to see if a particular day has been positive or negative. For example, everybody knows Dec has been a positive month. There's a backtest data that especially first day of Dec is particularly bullish. Buying ES at close of 11/30 was a setup. The target was 15pts although it moved a lot more. This is usually a full day trade, but it sometimes takes 2-3 days if things are profitable, to let them run a bit more. Trading instrument would be ES, EURUSD, USDJPY and EURJPY. I probably have one position at a time.
As for markets direction, I have no idea what's going to happen. I kind of hope markets would drop so that I can refinance, but what I hope has nothing to do with what's likely happen. As markets have been extended quite a bit, I don't want to buy a lot, but I've found a few stocks I'd like to accumulate over time due to strong fundamentals. Too many people are still worried about a double-dip, which means it's unlikely happen. All the crashes happened when no one (or 99% people didn't expect). Gov will keep pouring money because 1 million dollars in 2030 is nothing compared to one million in 2010.
Another thing is historically real estate has been always the key to wealth. Sure, real estate was killed in the last few years, but I still think many still believe once real estate takes off that will once again become a key to wealth. This will take a while to roll over, but if I slowly get positioned, it'll be paid off handsomely.
I'll not going to post trade-by-trade, but I'd like to update the end of balance each day until either I keep trading or blow up the account. It was nice to trade a big account, but it'll be interesting to make a new small account grow again.
I've been working with my good ole trading friend for a short term trade and it's about time to go live. He has just so much passion on trading and he's a kind of person who never gives up. He can sit in front of computer for hours and hours until he finds something profitable. He is constantly looking for a way to increase his probability.
While I built my house, he kept asking me when I'd be back to trading. He doesn't mind sharing what he's been doing and how he's been making good money consistently. He's always encouraging me saying 'we' can do this. Simply a nice person who can't say no if I ask any.
Even if I still have a lot of things to finish around the house, I did let him know, I'd like to come back on trading. Over the past few days, he shared everything he does and I spent a few nights with him with live charts.
What I'll trade is euro currency (6E). Euros simply move a lot compared to ES. If ES moves 10 points (or 40 ticks), it's probably a good day to trade. For euro, it's not hard to see 100 pips up and down, which is equal to about 400 ticks. This will work pretty well because I can get up early and trade while I have to miss US market hours to trade ES anyway. What I'm looking forward is about 3 small winners: 1 fixed target and 1 runner.
Another method is completely fact-based. I'm a big fan of fact based trading. Options selling was certainly one of fact based trading methods. If I didn't spend too much money on construction, I would have been still selling options just like Nat gas and Lumber. Nat gas would have been a killer altho it's 20/20 now. This method is pretty simple. Looking at different markets, I'm trying to see if a particular day has been positive or negative. For example, everybody knows Dec has been a positive month. There's a backtest data that especially first day of Dec is particularly bullish. Buying ES at close of 11/30 was a setup. The target was 15pts although it moved a lot more. This is usually a full day trade, but it sometimes takes 2-3 days if things are profitable, to let them run a bit more. Trading instrument would be ES, EURUSD, USDJPY and EURJPY. I probably have one position at a time.
As for markets direction, I have no idea what's going to happen. I kind of hope markets would drop so that I can refinance, but what I hope has nothing to do with what's likely happen. As markets have been extended quite a bit, I don't want to buy a lot, but I've found a few stocks I'd like to accumulate over time due to strong fundamentals. Too many people are still worried about a double-dip, which means it's unlikely happen. All the crashes happened when no one (or 99% people didn't expect). Gov will keep pouring money because 1 million dollars in 2030 is nothing compared to one million in 2010.
Another thing is historically real estate has been always the key to wealth. Sure, real estate was killed in the last few years, but I still think many still believe once real estate takes off that will once again become a key to wealth. This will take a while to roll over, but if I slowly get positioned, it'll be paid off handsomely.
I'll not going to post trade-by-trade, but I'd like to update the end of balance each day until either I keep trading or blow up the account. It was nice to trade a big account, but it'll be interesting to make a new small account grow again.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Market
It has been a while since my last post here. I've been just super-busy building a house. It's not done yet and I don't know if this will ever be done. There are so many times when I thought I should have just kept renting.
As the house is getting close to be done, I reactivated my trading account and slowly started getting used markets again. What I found very interesting lately is the relation between bonds and stocks. There's an old market wisdom saying, 'Bonds always know something...'
Stocks are rallying but if you look at Bonds, it's almost at all time high. If everyone's taking risk, Bonds shouldn't be at this level. Sure, Bonds can be wrong, but we've seen so many times markets would rally in a very thin volume or with no apparent reason. It goes up so slowly, but when it starts selling, it drops very very quickly.
Nat gas is at an attractive level regardless of fundamentals. I missed good trading opportunities in grains.
As the house is getting close to be done, I reactivated my trading account and slowly started getting used markets again. What I found very interesting lately is the relation between bonds and stocks. There's an old market wisdom saying, 'Bonds always know something...'
Stocks are rallying but if you look at Bonds, it's almost at all time high. If everyone's taking risk, Bonds shouldn't be at this level. Sure, Bonds can be wrong, but we've seen so many times markets would rally in a very thin volume or with no apparent reason. It goes up so slowly, but when it starts selling, it drops very very quickly.
Nat gas is at an attractive level regardless of fundamentals. I missed good trading opportunities in grains.
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