Trials

I am running two trials right now, my live real trading and a fake account using live data. Figuring that I can afford to lose all my fake money I threw caution to the wind and took every single trade that setup except ones that were in a real sharp move against the direction of the trade. A little price wallowing or a quick bump into the buy zone were all taken. Trades are all 50 share trades. Stops were moved, generally, $1 at a time once the price convincingly crosses the next dollar point.

At this point I have made three round trades and profited $357, net commissions.

I have 12 positions active for a total capital used of $22,362. I just kept entering trades that setup in alphabetical order from my list. If everything stopped out right now I would be down (-$270) (total net including actual profits) and my paper gains would be $376 (not including realized gains)

Interesting numbers, of all the possible stock trades I have 12 that I did not make as they did not meet my entry price so my scan is running about 50%.

In my real account I used different criteria and have entered 8 trades (two closed). I had to use 25 share trades in my margin account in order to be able to execute multiple trades (it's a small account) and I am using it exclusively for short selling. Current P/L is (-$32.75). Total stopped out loss over all three real accounts would be (-$330.25).

While my two lists have some overlap I specifically deleted any of these duplicates from my fake list. I am not sure what the real difference in performance may be due to...perhaps trying harder with the real money is the factor as it seems to be in day trading as well. I may very well either switch lists, mix them up a bit or just use the same trade entry criteria on my real list with the same stop moves. Most of my stopped out loss would be attributed to my having moved the stops back down yesterday... a larger paper loss is easier to take than a smaller realized loss when I have these trades open and still within their "zone". I would have let them all go had they hit the bottom of the range on my charts.

After all that I probably should have taken all of these trades off the table when they were at least above break even this past week, I was forgetting that we were going into a long weekend. Perhaps the tail end of yesterday's drop was due to traders offloading their positions prior to the weekend and I may see some serious buying on Monday to bolster prices again.

My shorts did well enough at least.

Jeff.