Patience is Virtue

I am at a point in my life where the market is controlling me. I lose and lose and keep losing. Main reason is I tend to not wait for the setups and start trading when odds are stacked against me. The challenge is trying to keep myself from trading when I know the outcome is more likely devastating the my previous trade. The market has been more along the lines of neutral the past week. However overall the fundamentals are not fairing well and I am to be on the short side. Unfortunately from a contrarian perspective too many are feeling pessimistic and usually that means stocks go up. Funny how each day for the past week since last Tuesday big up day the market has either ended flat or has fallen. The momentum is on the down side, but without much panic in sell orders it seems I should stay on the side lines.

Why I am such a horrible trader...

I am writing this entry to remind myself why the market has again got the best of me. Clearly after three years of trading I have yet to learn the most fundamental rules I have bestowed upon myself.

Rules:

1) Always set a stop. If I am profiting in a trade I must set a trailing stop. Whether it be a mindset stop or an actual price stop set in my brokerage account I must fully obey by it once I enter a trade. A mindset stop must be executed when price hits level. In short I must know when to get out of a trade before I get in.

2) Do not fight the tape. I can not go against the market if there is a trend. The trend is my friend only if I follow it. Repeat, the trend is your friend only if you follow it period.

3) Never use margins. Any leverage will only amplify my risk of losses. I will only lose the amount that I can afford to lose. (Probably every penny I have, but nothing beyond that.) Any further losses would entitle me to a death sentence. Why a death sentence? Without any capital I can not trade in the market, if I lose beyond the amount that I started with, then I can not make back any of the money I borrow and lost. What else can I do? Do not even set myself in that predicament period.

So the following graph and story is my lesson to myself. (Note I have repeated this to many times to count.)

Two Mondays ago I opened a short on 1100/1105 Calls spreads on the SPX that was set to expire in February '10. At that time the trend was sloping down, however I jumped into the trade too soon. Too soon because the SPX was able to go beyond the 1100 only one day after I made my trade. Hence I was losing in my trade significantly with the SPX peaking around 1105.

My first mistake was not stopping out of the trade when it was going against me. When I first entered the trade the SPX was around 1085, but I did not set a stop. The index shot all the way to 1105 on the following Tuesday with me having an unrealized lose somewhere around $3000.

My main reason for entering the trade was because I saw the 50 MA line trending down and the index broke the upward trend that began in March '09. With the trend turning in my favor by February 8 I was up over $4000. In a matter of four trading days the trade I made fluctuated over a $7000 span.

I should have exited the trade the following week as the trend began to turn upward. Unforgiving the market was I still stubbornly held my position. As the market turned upward gradually I was up about $2500 before entering the third week of February. My final exit point to still make a profit in the trade came around morning of Monday, February 15. My stubbornness and greed got the best of me and I stood with my trade. By the end of Thursday I concede with the largest lost I have this year to date. There is no reason I should have held the trade for this long.

I simply just could not get myself to admit to my mistakes. I wanted to win so badly and had the chance to exit with a profit. Clearly my greed and unwillingness to admit defeat were the cause of my demise. Is there nothing I can do to stop this from happening again? Yes there is, put in a g*d d*mn stop on my trades.

Why can't I get myself to do so is for one reason. I feel option spread prices are always fluctuating and usually it is never in a daily trader's favor. Market makers have the final say and can manipulate the prices to their favor. That type of manipulation does exist but I can not let that blind me from taking such a significant lost. It is my fault for holding out to the bitter end. I can not blame anyone but myself on that trade period. Yet somehow I had the decency to get out of the trade? But why so late?

My greed in trying to retain the unrealized profit was what set me back from exiting the trade. My complacency blinded me from thinking logically. The trend in the market was clearly up and I could have exited the trade Tuesday or Wednesday before the expiration day without significant loses, but I did not. I only conceded when I was totally demoralized.

My losing trade pales in comparison to what happened today in Austin, TX. Joseph Stack's actions today were totally inappropriate but if the suicide note is for real, I have total sympathy toward Jack. I to am unemployed and struggling to scrape by. Life is not as straight forward as I had hoped, but I live another day to do my best. Hurting others because I am going through a struggle is not right nor is it ethically moral.

Update: Talk about being very unlucky. The SPX Feb contracts do not expire until Friday Morning. They stop trading after Thursday, the day I exited my trade. At the end of the trade session the Treasury increases the interest rates and the market starts tanking. The SPX is below the 1100 point again. Just my luck, I lost any profit from the trade and on top of it lost $8600 in capital. Can it get any worse?

Weekly Review of the SPX

I just played around with moving averages today and spotted some interesting concerning support and resistance levels of the SPX. From the graph above I simple set the chart to weekly prices with a 20 and 50 SMA. While I used a 200 EMA for the longer trend in order to have recent closing prices effect the 200 MA value. It is clear the 20 MA line was broken in January '10 where the index was unable to hold above 1140. As half of February has passed the 50 DMA line has also been broken. As of last Friday the SPX closed below the 50 DMA, which has now become a resistance level, around 1078. The next MA support would be around 990 which is the 200 MA line. That is a way for the index to go and anything is possible. Furthermore the MACD has begun a very noticeable decline relative to the start of this rally since March of '09.

With the 20 DMA still in slight decline and the 50 DMA flatting it seems the index is in neutral territory. In April of '09 a similar declining 20 DMA and flatting 50 DMA also occurred as shown in the graph above. On the sides of the bulls it seems the market is posed to replicate the April '09 movement just by comparing the 20 and 50 MAs. Can the bulls continue this rally that began in March of '09?

"Price is King, Volume is Queen"

The title is from Mr. Wang of WangHappyTrading or MyHappyTrading. I give an example that exactly defines the meaning of the title. Today as I scanned through charts I wanted to make a note of what is happening to the S&P 500. The SPY ticker weekly chart is shown below.
As of now I am short the index since last Monday, 2-1-10, but after yesterday's amazing push upward in the final hour of the index I have become a little scare. My goal in this blog entry is to trying to get myself out of that worrying mode and anticipate what next week will bring.

The chart illustrates how much the market has gained in all of '09, but the previous four weeks the index has been trending lower. To confirm the most recent descending trend the volume has ramped upward week after week. Furthermore the gains in '09 were generally increasing in price while volume was decreasing. It looks I am trading in the trend that seems to be going down, but anything is still possible for the few weeks to come.

On the chart I also marked a somewhat similar descending trend that occurred in the beginning of '07. The index actually end up even though the trend was down initially for four weeks while volume also picked up. In a very similar situation we are in now, I think it a similar pattern may shape out again 2-4 months down the road. If next week the volume picks up but the index is flat or rising, I plan to exit my short positions.

Feb 05 Intraday SPX

After reading from a variety of stock traders' blogs and stocktwitters I decided to record today's $TICK symbol data. A value that many traders discussed about the tick, so called extreme levels on the $TICK were at +/-1000. At +1000 institutions with large quantities of cash would be purchasing equities, and vise verse -1000 institutions are heavy salers of equities. Below is the SPX 1min chart and $TICK 1min chart.
Throughout the day from initial open up until about 11:30am the market was fairly neutral. However around that time the $TICK was substantially in the negative. Between that time interval the $TICK had hit -1000 three times as marked as gray circles. As the day progressed there were more -1000 hits. Of course the overall market caved in on itself. Yet if I had identified that the $TICK was so ominously negative, before 11:30am I could have had a huge advantage in a risk/reward short index position. Note the $TICK never even hit 1000 as the day progressed, and with a negative trending day it is hard to believe that there will be any hits above 1000 for the rest of today's session.

As I write this post, just around 2:46pm there is another hit at -1000 but the SPX has gain about 5+ points from its days low. Seeing how negative the $TICK is today, I am predicting the SPX will have to test today's low, 1044, again.

Update: Novice trader I still am. Boy am I glad I did not short anything today, yikes. Market actually ended up today.

How Might Friday's Employment #'s Affect the Market?

With nothing better to do I decided to collect some data on www.BLS.gov on every January employment number for the past nine years. I compared the data with the three major indexes intraday closings and how they fared after the job numbers were announced in each year respectively. The chart is below.


To me the data seems pointless in predicting what will happen tomorrow in the overall markets. I only consider jobs #s affecting the market but there had to be other news factored in as to why the markets responded the way they did. For instance in '09 the job numbers looked awful but the indexes gains in the day session was by far the biggest in any day after the January employment #s came in. In the other direction '01 and '03 had terrific numbers but market got hammered. Maybe future expectations or market sentiments or technicals in the market had to do with gains and losses. So in conclusion I do not know if tomorrow's numbers will effect the markets or if it does effect, how much. Maybe you do?

Update: I took indexes numbers from Google Finance and think they maybe off. (For instance I just noticed in the chart for 2001 the Nasdaq dropped over 122? Maybe its the real deal but again I only took data from what was available to me.)

AAPL Closed Trade...

I closed my vertical spread on AAPL with a profit of $199+change. I think I was lucky to call this trade so perfectly.

AAPL Topped...

AAPL has been hitting record highs in previous weeks, however yesterday price action for the stock was bearish. For instance the peak never reached the resistance of $215. Instead the price went back down to end just below $206.


The chart marked in green are the two occasions where price reached the resistance $215. Yesterday's price was a sign that prices would go lower because it was a lower high. Although Apple will probably announce their latest and greatest product today, the peak in the prices have topped. If we close below $198 in the week to follow then further weaknesses are in store. Presently I sold a vertical call spread in the stock and do not expect stock price to reach $220 by February expiration.

Anything is still possible, but odds are in my favor that prices remain below $220 mainly because of the strong $215 resistance. Even yesterday's significantly higher volume was unable to crack the price level.

BIDU picking the top

Its been a week since BIDU's crash back to near 400s. The initial drop in BIDU began three days after the gap up. There was an immediate gap down on day four and I scalp the trade for a small gain. (A very similar trend happened in AAPL, it was day four after its initial gap up did the stock go up. I find it very interesting.)


I was unable to capitalize on such simple move down on the stock because most of my capital was settled in, Goldman Sachs, GS options. I was on the wrong side of the GS trade and got whack pretty hard. I had 175 Feb10 calls at 5.10 and sold them for about 1.95. I also purchased call vertical spreads that total my lost to nearly $5,000.

I held the GS's calls until they reported their 4th quarter '09 earnings, and as trend was a tall tale sign, the stock dropped like a rock that day. (JPM and INTC both had positive earning reports for the 4th quarter, but their stocks dropped after the announcing their respective reports.) I closed all the calls I had on GS and turned bearish immediately.

My emotions took the best of me in the GS trade. I broke many rules that I tried to enforce. First was to control my lost, which I was unable to do because the day GS open to trade right after earnings the stock price fell within minutes. My asking prices had to be changed every few seconds but I was unable to catch any bids. Out of desperation to get out of the trade I went with market order. I should had set a trail stop on the trade to control my loses. This trade was just dread awful. Still I cannot dwell on the mistake, instead I must repeat to myself to learn from this and move on.

Another reason why I know it was a bad trade was because the day I purchased the GS calls I wanted to recoup loses I had in my GLD strangle spread. Arrogance got the best of me because my calls never got a positive gain after the day I purchased them. After my consecutive loses in YGE and GLD I should have walked away from trading for the week or at least control my amount of capital to trade so that I would not again, yes again, fall off a cliff. (Metaphorically speaking of my capital.) Foolish me.

Furthermore not only did I lose capital in hold the GS options I lost the opportunity to gain some impressive capital if I could have shorted BIDU. One mistake automatically leads to another. A chain of events that clearly were all hurting me.

There is a bright spot to this. I was able to flip bearish right as I left my GS options and used whatever capital I had to shorting the market and have recoup almost 2/3 of all my loses in the GS options. I also felt comfortable with my shorts when I executed them, which I did not have as much as when I purchased the GS options. I should take note of my comfort levels in certain trades. Until next time, G.L.T.A. in trading.

Picking a Top

Today I post a few charts on a trade I am prepared to put a position on. To short the stock BIDU.

Before I just go short the stock I went and did some research. I wanted to avoid as much technical analysis jargon as possible and apply a simple chart pattern. The pattern I am looking for is a daily upward gap followed by a second up day. There were two stocks that had similar upward gaps on a intraday chart that I have followed for quite some time. The charts are AAPL, Apple and AMZN, Amazon.


The day AMZN gaped up was the day they posted earnings. The following day the stock manage to gain even more. Considering the first day gap was a new high for the stock I am betting that the second day rally was due partly by shorts covering. Although there was a sense of optimism in AMZN for blowing out expectations so there were also significant buyers. The days after the stock consolidated AMZN still dropped about $5 in the consolidation. A good time to short the stock was on the third day after the gap day.

In AAPL on October 19, 2009 the stock spiked at the open. It ended the day closing lower but the following day it again increased at the open. The stock ended on the second day at pike high. The third day the stock was neutral and then declined on the fourth day. The decline was pretty dramatic, over $10 drop in a week. Again it looks like a lot of shorts getting squeeze on the second day after the upward gap. What is interesting to note is that Oct. 19 was a Wednesday and option expiration was on the 21st. 21st was actually a neutral day for AAPL, it ended without gaining much.

As I write this post BIDU is at a 52 week high which is dangerous for people who are shorting. The main reason is because when a stock has past its previous highs there are very few traders that can preciously judge how far higher the stock can go. (Trying to pick the top is very difficult.) Furthermore traders who have been shorting the stock at its former high may begin unloading their position to avoid heavy losses. For the past two days a similar pattern has occur in BIDU as in AAPL. The first day BIDU opened with a huge gap on Wednesday of options expiration week. The stock price ended lower than where it gaped at the open. However a continuation upward trend continued on the second day. Presently the stock is up 5%+ at about $463 and change. Over 80 points swing in two days, impressive.

Due to such an impressive run I do not plan to play any Jan10 options. The stock just has to much of a upward momentum. To be safer I am concentrating on deep in the money put options with Feb10 expiration. If chart pattern in BIDU is similar to AAPL than I expect BIDU to consolidate downward in the week to follow. Will check back on this prediction.

Big down day for me....

I should had left my GLD straddle position last Friday but did not. Today gold prices increased in dramatic fashion and I took a major hit. At the close of my Jan10 107 straddle I lost $275.5 including commissions. Talk about not surpassing my stop losses for the month. A major blow, indeed.

I am unable to time the market right presently. The internal market conditions are bullish but stocks that I am in are getting whacked. One note to add today is YGE shooting over $18.00 as shown in graph below. Thank god I did not stick around to see the pop up. That would have tacked on at least another $100 loss if I had stayed in my sold puts.

Another example that trend is your friend when you follow it. Clearly my losses were directly on the opposite side of trends. For now I am long financial stocks due to last week's up trend and will be picking at specific institutions. I am not going against the trend....

First losses of 2010

For the total loss in trade including commission, $176. I had purchased 5 veritcal Jan10 puts @ 17.5/19 at $0.90 each but the stock did not decline enough for me to profit on. I held the options for a couple of days anticipating on a further downward decline after significant gains. Instead today was the day where it shot up slightly over 1% in a matter of minutes. YGE held strong at the $17.85 and went up on strong volume. As shown in the white diagonal line in the volume section below.


It was clear to me yesterday the trade was a big mistake but I held it overnight because of two reasons. Sentiment for the broader market was neutral to bearish and the five day moving average for YGE was flat. I knew I was making a gamble, all choices in life are gambles in my opinion because as long as there is a probability between winning and losing it is gambling, and anticipated on a breakdown today. YGE at first looked weak but the broader market shot up in a matter of moments, especially the Nasdaq. Then YGE gained momentum and it was difficult for me to get out of the trade due probably to the small market cap of the stock. I lost about 39% of my total trade investment.

Next time I will probably watch for moving averages to actually decline before I go bearish. Furthermore I should purchase less option spreads on small cap stocks due to lack of liquidity.
Clearly the market is on a neutral to upward trend right now so any bearishness I have to stocks should be at a minimum.

Patience is key and I remember another trade blogger saying that, cash itself is a position. Rather than holding stocks and options overnight I should also hold more cash overnight to avoid big swings in the market. I have a gut felling that even if the market does not look like it will go down, but when it does it will be a downward cliff. Why? The trade volume for the past week is lighter than usual so bulls do not have conviction in the upward push. Yet, "price is the only thing that matters."- Brian Shannon of Alphatrends.net

I have an aspiration to not loss over $3000 this year, therefore each month not to go over $250. I know its highly impossible and I should not have such an aggressive stance on losses. However with this restriction I force myself psychologically to think twice before I make a trade. In essence scrutinize my trades a lot more than usual in order to give myself better odds in profiting.

I am also in another losing position presently, a sale of a GLD Jan10 straddle 107 and the position presently has a $35 loss including commissions. I plan to buy it back without a lost but will have to wait. Good for me is that the five day moving average has finally turned downward on GLD. Will update on this position.

Timing it Right.... I did not...

I purchased a NDX vertical-(1875/1900) put yesterday at $12.30 and sold it today at $13.85, a little to early. As the chart above shows there was a significant drop after where I sold. Market indicators at the time had techs continue to drop, but because financial companies and airlines were going up so I felt a turn to the upside was around the corner. Indeed the market pulled up around 10:30. Yet I should have let the momentum of the trend push me out of the trade versus my own instincts. The reason is because right after I sold the spread, two minutes later it was marked around $14.80. The spread peak was around $15.50 and that was easy money I did not pick up.

On the other hand it is always better to wish I had more gains than to accept a significant lost. Right now I am getting wacked on my YGE puts spread and feel I need to close them today. Not sure yet.

Mistake after mistake after mistake

I was hoping to start off the new year on a winning streak and at least end the year 2010 in the positive. In any case I went long GOOG options yesterday right before Google was to have their presentation to unveil the Nexus One. A couple of hours after I executed my trade I was already up over 15% but not expecting what would happen next I kept the options as the stock tumbled.


This is not my first trade of the year but I am posting it to remind myself how fortunate I was in this trade. What happened today was GOOG stock tumbling over $15. I had Jan10 630 call options and luckily I sold all of them right at today's open, which GOOG started off up $1. I did not even have the mentality to short GOOG after I exited the trade even though I knew full well the stock was breaking supports left and right. The reason for not shorting was because I was shell shock to have escape my call trade with a profit.

The technical indicators had the stock lower however I kept the call options overnight which was a major mistake. I knew the stock was getting weak but did not anticipate on a $15+ downward day for the stock on a otherwise subdued trading ranging for the overall indexes. Next time I will make sure not to flip back and forth between going short and long on GOOG and instead stick to my original plan. My original plan was to buy Puts which I did but sold one day after for a measly gain and went long on the same day. I had studied the pattern that GOOG's upward short term trend was slowing and anticipated on a drop, just timed it way off.

On a side note around 3pm I bought a NDX vertical put anticipating on accelerated drop in the NASDAQ due to major tech stocks such as AAPL, AMZN, RIMM, IBM, INTC, & GOOG all were looking to accelerate downward. That I am making a profit on and will probably close out the position tomorrow morning to avoid any positive push Friday's unemployment numbers may bring to the market.

Taking it one day at a time because there is nothing better to do than living in the present.

Faith in the system in question?

I have been taught that when you do the right thing, good things will happen to you. Tonight Citigroup announced they have raised $17 billion through the sale of 5.4 billion common shares at $3.15. Bloomberg Link.

The global credit crisis of 2008 brought the financial industry to its knees. One resultant is that of Citigroup being assisted by federal government diluting the common share value dramatically. This was required because certain individuals of the company took the wrong side of a bet and lost big. Dramatically no one is held responsible for the company's mistakes and in turn the tax payers were shouldered for the mistakes. Any government money in the end really comes down to tax payer money.

Excluding all the money I lost investing in Citigroup over the years I am avoiding any trades with this company. Already depressed with my loss this news of hearing Citigroup diluting it's shareholders even more makes me... no words can express my anger. How on earth can they get away with this?

Oh, the government is helping them. The government's intervention in 2008 to save Citigroup priced in at $45 billion in preferred shares and assistance paying a portion of the company's $301 billion losses in investments. Reference Link. In 2009 the government owned, no tax payer owned, preferred shares were transitioned to common shares at $3.25 a piece.

Just in the recent days Bank of America accumulated $20 billion in a stock sale diluting their shareholders in order to pay back their share of the TARP money- government assistance. Citigroup and Wells Fargo not wanting to be left out decided to dilute their own shareholders too and tonight Citigroup has paid back the TARP money they owed. In doing so Citigroup as a company will avoid $38 billion in taxes to the federal government and forced shareholders, mainly tax payers, to pay back the TARP money through a common shareholder dilution.

The $3.15 per share dilution is below the investment the government paid for owning about 1/3 of the common shares before dilution. In essence tax payers got shafted in every which way possible. Reference Link.

There is no way to hide from the loses. Even if I do not invest in the market the government will just take my money and your money and waste it for the benefit of wall street. To put icing on the cake Citigroup having paid back their share of the TARP money will now be allowed to pay their employees beyond the restricted $500,000 for the year 2009. Reference Link. The employees that created the global credit crisis.

This in inhumane and it will continue indefinitely as long as the American population allows it. I want to know if someone does wrong, should they not be punished for it? I can only hope this question will be answered sooner rather than later.

Pivotal Moment

The ETF FAS today gaped up beyond $72 and ended the day just above it as shown on graph above. Some technical indicators I use daily are pivot line- yellow line, upper and lower bollinger lines- gray curves, daily vwap- blue line, and weekly vwap- purple line. Very interesting that the daily pivot line was set at $71.48 and right around 3:20PM EST the lowest point FAS reach was $71.30. Note today was FED annnoucement which had really little effect on the finincials and even the downward momentum was paused at the pivot line. If only I had the courage to purchase the stock at about $71.50 as it pushed up against the pivot line. Dang. Maybe next time.

Near bottom again,,,

So I again had another horrible week in trading and lose another -$1500 and for that I have stopped trading. Not because I want to but because my account is below $500. I do not even have $400 in my trade account. Ouch. It is still hurting, but that is life. It sucks to be bad at trading.

I stumbled upon an interesting site that updates daily of President Obama's overall national approval rating. Link. It is not fairing well, but I am not surprise. Many people had high expectations for him and because he has yet to bring America out of the recession people are losing their faith in him. President Obama has fought many battles to be where he is at today, and just because after 7 months the country has yet to get better it still shouldn't be fair to doubt in his abilities. Why it took President Bush eight years in office to get America through 2008. Why in the world could one expect President Obama to rewind eight years of President Bush's terms in less than eight years? America loves performance and wants it immediately.

President Obama has been much more transparent than form President Bush. He has been in front of America weekly if not daily on all issues facing America. Just because he can not fix everything of do everything he has promised in seven months is not fair. Yet this is America and without performance I am nothing. Life is cruel and unjust to all those that stay still and watch. I hope president Obama will surpass all expectations, because I always love routing for the underdog.

Trend Failure....

First off my apologies for the poor picture. I think it has something to do with my computer's screen resolution, which I will try to resolve before future posts.

What a devastating week for me. It can not get worst. The chart above illustrates that even if a trend is identified the market can still go the other way. Case in point. On Monday July 13, 09 I sold iron condors at 915/920calls & 825/830puts for about $0.60 excluding commissions. (I have been selling calls since march and been profiting from 10% to 35% weekly, however I was putting in 90% to 100% of my capital to achieve such profits. I consider this trading style being very aggressive and just down right crazy. Yet I give it my all to reading charts daily in knowing fully what odds I have of failing.) Anticipating on a bigger fall and wanting out of the money options expire worthless I went with the lower puts. Boy was that a huge mistake. The end result today is that the SPX ended above 915 therefore I lose all my capital in the trade. I did not do the exact calculation, but from the amount of options I traded the total loss comes close to $-34,120 not my biggest one sum lost experienced but largest of this year. I am worst of than I started at the beginning of the year. I will log in my mistakes in hopes others and myself can learn from them.

What happened?

Over the previous weekend I had the SPX chart reviewed upon the monthly, weekly, and daily trends. All trends expected a downward for the coming week. There was a head and shoulder pattern as shown on the chart below:

Not anticipating a significant up movement for the week I had the Fibonacci retracement line around $878.91 to $927.28. Anticipating the head and shoulder pattern would result in a right shoulder I went and shorted $915 calls. The 23.6% retracement was right around that value and not think the start of 2nd quarter earning season could be this optimistic the SPX shot upward for the next four days. The market as of 3:45pm EST of 07-16-09 has the SPX stand at 943.08! In less than four sessions the SPX index moved up 64+ points or +7.2%. (Note to self earning season is dangerous for indexes to swing up or down. Very dangerous.)

Mistakes:

1) The risk I put myself to gain 10% was not worth it. Understand if I had the patience and waited out this week I may have executed a lot better trades. I need to build patience, because sometimes the best trades are the ones I never make. This one should have been one.

2) I never done an iron condor trade until now, so this is my first trading the option spread and not knowing full well of its power I got slaughtered. Hey at least I am still breathing and alive. Yet barely. In any case I should have practice the spread before I went in it for real. Now that I have played it I will always remember this trade.

3) Following trends is good when it comes to trading but never put all your eggs in one basket. Again the risk to reward ratio was horrible in the method I choose to trade. Yet I should have know it wasn't a good week to sell calls. Earning season can be so unpredictable. Then again the market is always unpredictable.

4) I could not cope with this lose and stayed home isolating myself. If I had known how much I really could lose in this trade I would not have made the trade. Odds were in my favor at the beginning of the week, but it wasn't when it counted the most. I should not let this get to me, but learn from it. Yet a lot of money just gone out of my account again. I simply can not win. This type of mentality has destroyed my mind & body, and has created so many distractions. I clearly need to get my mind straight before I play again. Its just too much.

Looking forward to the Futures....

I am eating dinner as of 1:05am. Yes eating spaghetti with tostitos sauce while I type this post. I will try to make the story short. I was planning to eat chips with the tostitos sauce for dinner, but found the top portion of the jar growing white molds. As usual I disposal as much of the white mold sauce. I took what was left and heated it in a stove pot and mixed it with cooked spaghetti. There dinner served.

Now I will go back to trading. The title of this post was written like so on purpose. I just signed up for trading futures on TOS. I hope I can make a foturnate now, lol. I just better make sure not to lose my shirt. For over a month I have researched as much as I could on trading futures. One of my favorite blogs on trading futures is "eminiaddict". He truely is trying to help people out. All his service does not require a single fee. Heck he doesn't even have a donate link on his blog. Although I think he should make one. He is one and a million of wonderful traders willing to help beginners. Hopefully I can follow in his footsteps with this blog.

So the most popular future out there right now is this future contract called ES Mini. ES Mini is a future contract created by CME, (Chicago Mercantile Exchange) and the future corresponds to the S&P 500 Index. So the ES Mini is another way to trade indices. What makes the ES Mini so interesting to me is that it can be traded almost 24 hours a day from Monday through Friday! Any news that gets posted overnight during a weekday US stock closed session may still effect the ES Mini.

This is one step closer to a global market. To top it all off today I just learned that people in America can actually trade in Japan's Nikki 225 futures too. The ticker symbol is "NKD". I do not know much outside of the S&P, Nasdaq, and Dow Jones, but it could get interesting because now I am planning on trading before I go to bed. Man so excited I can not wait.

With all this excitement I know I am going to make stupid trades. So rather then playing for real I plan on using a TOS paper money account first. Get my feet wet with these so call futures contracts. There are quite a few out there. There are the ones following the Nasdaq- /NQ E-mini, Dow Jones- /YM E-mini, and plenty more from CME. (Check future contracts from CME.) I have noticed the /ES futures are the most traded contracts out of all futures by far so with signifcant amount of liquidty is in the /ES would mean it is easier to get in and out of trades.

Finally Results!

After all that procrastination I have my 2009 performance on Excel. It includes all commission deductions, wash sales, and expired options. What it does not include is the reduction of profit after taxes. (Technically I am still in the red so no taxes on loses yet.) I know I am still in the red but since April I have been hooked to a particular option spread that has brought me consistent gains. More on that in a later post. Now just look below to see how I have fared so far this year.

I began trading options around Nov '08 and haven't returned to trading actual stock shares ever since. Although I love options I have also had my worst ever losses with them. The main reason for the loses was my inability to factor in time decay. Me as a beginner thought naively that if I purchased an option worth $0.10 and sell it at a $1.00 I would make a 1000% profit. What I did not consider was the amount of time I had in order for the option premium to reach $1.00 before expiration. There lies my misunderstanding for option trades. When you pay to purchase an option and it expires out of the money, you get zip-poo in return. Nothing. Zero. Nada. A big fat O. So I did that for about the first five months of my option trading experience and racked in an amazing loss of over $30k. (How stupid is that? Probably ranks in the top 10 of all stupid things I did in my lifetime to date.) The chart above only covers year '09 but I had some terrible option trades in '08 too. The chart of my overall performance including 2008, the year I started trading is important to me. Important to me in many ways such as learning not to repeat the same mistakes and the fact that even if I hit any significant profit for 2009 it would still be overshadowed by the losses of '08. Hence I still have work to put together my overall lifetime performance results. That will be for another post.