Cha-Ching?

Quick update.

My brokerage account is active again.
I deposited $100 for regular trading of options just to confirm some suspicions on a strategy going forward and $600 in my Roth IRA account.

On a good note, it's only been a week, but other than the money spent on commissions, the Roth account is doing excellent. Eight total positions open in carefully selected dividend stocks with a dividend reinvestment plan (DRIP) set up and the net gain (commissions included) is sitting at $31.41 as of this writing.

For the regular account, I've selected 7 high volume low priced stocks after considering the Barchart lists here and here for several days. For all seven of the chosen stocks, I'm keeping my trade decisions simple by identifying the support and resistance (S&R) lines. By choosing the monthly S&R as major decision points and weekly S&R as minor ones before drilling down to the daily chart, it makes it easier to identify ideal points of entry and exit for a particular trade.

I wasn't sure how much my commission on options were, so I made two bogus trades. I call them bogus because they were out-of-the-money weekly options trades lacking logic for their entry. A recent acquaintance had very passionately argued the probability of multiplying $100 into something around $10,000 within a few months using the same logic I used quite some time back, so I wanted to show just how often and how much you would have to be right on your trades in order to nullify the effect of commissions.

The first trade was placed for a T Mar $42 put on March 9. At the time the stock was trading around $41.8 and the option price as $0.33. There was no logic to this trade, so a trailing stop of $0.10 was set. This is because commissions are around $5.00 per trade (plus some change for fees as I found out). For a $100 account, this is already eating up 10% of the balance when considering both directions of the trade. I decided since 10% is already going to commissions, might as well just risk 10% of the account per position. The $0.10 trailing stop means a potential loss of $10, which is 10% of the account.

Because a trailing stop was set, there was no real need to monitor the position. Thankfully it executed as planned with a total loss of $20.10 on the account by the next day.

My "challenger" does not believe in setting automatic loss points and thinks you should just have a mental one and execute when it is needed. I disagree, so the next two trades had no stop losses or trailing stops. We used the same stock and an order for an Apr $41 put again at $0.33 on March 10. The order did not execute until March 15, but I disagreed with the trade direction so I sold at a price of $0.31 this morning and bought a Mar 24 $43 call at $0.09 instead. That's a $12.10 loss on that closed trade, but I will simulate and continue to watch the price action over the next month just to see how it would've turned out. Since the price of the new position is pretty much equal to the amount acceptable as a risk, there will be no automatic trailing stop set for it.

The other trade entered on the same day (March 9) was a VALE Apr $9 put at $0.39 limit. The order filled at $0.38 and one week later with no stop loss or trailing stop, is currently sitting at a price of $0.205. That's somewhere around a $27 loss after the commissions for exiting the trade is taken into account. Though a mental stop loss was set, I did not have time this week to continuously watch the price and place the sell order when appropriate. At the risk of even greater loss, I'll leave it for next week before getting rid of it

With 3 straight losses totaling $62.27 so far, hopefully my point has been proven. If you are trading with a small account, watch your commissions and trade with an automatic stop loss. I prefer trailing stops since it adjusts with any potential gains. I'll be putting another $100 into the account and placing careful, deliberate trades next week.

This update wasn't as quick as anticipated. Quicker ones will follow.

Hindsight is 20/20

I suddenly remembered I was blogging about my trading.
Reading some of these posts, it's amazing how stupid and ignorant I was.
20% gains every two weeks? Are you serious?

Actually. I was. Even in 2015 I was serious because that was when I tried binary options. Needless to say that was a failure too. And the reason is simple. Ignorance and Desperation.

Why in the world was I expecting my money to multiply by over 100 times in a year? What I was expecting to accomplish in two weeks took Warren Buffett the whole of 2016 to do. Am I mad?

I say ignorance is a reason because I chose to believe the exceptions could become the norm. In other words, I ignored what centuries of investing has thought the rest of the world. If it's too good to be true, it probably is. I hadn't read or studied enough about trading and investing to realize that my expectations were unreal.

I say desperation is a reason because I wanted to quickly gain back everything I had lost from my venture into real estate. I lightly mentioned it on one of my posts, but the truth of the matter is that I lost A LOT. I mean, sure it wasn't my own money since it was funded with credit cards, but I am obligated to pay it back. With interest. I also lost my source of income around that time, so monthly payments went down the toilet, which in turn affected my credit.

This also goes back to my ignorance. If I truly knew then how valuable my credit was, I wouldn't have taken on the debt. Even if I were to take on debt I would have ensured that I had enough spare funds to service the debt in the event there is no positive outcome from my venture. I had not studied enough about real estate investing to ensure that crucial step.

In 2016, I paper traded for a few months with success and believed I knew what I was doing. The account started with $100,000 and I was able to increase that by about 30% in a month. Seeing these results, a friend entrusted me with $1500. I truly believed I could achieve those same results. Here's an advice. Trading with $1500 does not work the same as trading with $100,000. You can't continue to "dollar cost average" till your trade idea works out. Oh and. Commissions will eat up your gains.

Three months later here's how I ended. $397.39 lost to commissions from trading so often and $743 in actual loss from the trade ideas. Total $1140.39 lost. Left shows loss from each trade and right shows loss including commissions. Click for a larger view if you can't see them.

So. What does this all mean?
I will be trading again come 2017. I will once again put my own money on the line keeping in mind all that I have learned. I will not expect unrealistic gains, but I will take them if they come.
I once read that Warren Buffet had two rules of investing. The first was not to lose money. The second was not to forget the first rule. Those will be my guiding words for 2017.

I look forward to sharing great news. I also look forward to hearing them from you.
Till then, may 2016 end well and have a prosperous and wealth building 2017!!!

The Two Week Time Frame

I mentioned something yesterday that I would like to explain a bit more here.
It's the notion that making 20% in two weeks is better than 40% in four weeks (or one month).

Mathematically, the formula for calculating compound interest at a specified rate and time frame is:

where

P = principal amount (the initial amount you borrow or deposit)

r  = annual rate of interest (as a decimal)

t  = number of years the amount is deposited or borrowed for.

A = amount of money accumulated after n years, including interest.

n  =  number of times the interest is compounded per year 

Yes. I copied that from the first page of googling "compound interest formula"

So. In our case for the sake of illustrating the point, we'll put 1 as the principal amount. 

The rate we want to achieve in the two week time frame is 20%. Converted to a decimal that's 0.20

For simplicity's sake we'll go with 1 year for t

Since it's being reinvested (compounded) every two weeks throughout the year that's 26 for n.

Plug and chug simplified it becomes 1.2^26, which equals about 114.5

The same thing for the four week time frame with a 40% rate means 13 for n and 0.40 for r.

Plug and chug simplifies it to 1.4^13, which equals 79.4

What this means is that if everything goes EXACTLY AS PLANNED (40% GAIN) and EVERY SINGLE PENNY is REINVESTED EVERY FOUR WEEKS, your initial amount invested will be MULTIPLIED BY 79 by the year's end.

And if everything goes EXACTLY AS PLANNED (20% GAIN) and EVERY SINGLE PENNY is REINVESTED EVERY TWO WEEKS, your initial amount invested will be MULTIPLIED BY 114 by the year's end. 

That's a SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCE.

If we reduce the time frame to just the first four weeks (meaning n is 2 for the two week time frame), the results are 1.44 versus 1.4. This still shows that a two week frame at 20% is better than four weeks at 40%.

Now that I've bored you with all that math, let me show you what happened today.

If you remember, the combined MU and VZ call cost $283.96. I sold the MU call today for $0.10 as you can see and the VZ call for $3.00. This means that $283.96 turned into $597.98 (a gain of 110%).

After the sale, I bought new options. The AAPL Aug 16 97.14 call @ $2.31and two AA Aug 16 16.00 calls @ 1.15 for a total cost of $472.99. Yes, I saved some cash from the gain this time around. The aim is to turn that into $567.59 in two weeks.

Here's what the account looks like after the market closed today:

I've gone from an account value of $319.74 two weeks ago to $620.49 today.
Obviously things turned out better than expected but it's just proof of the potential behind this system.
I'll continue to aim for modest gains (20% in two weeks) but will accept whatever gain comes.
I'll be occupied till Friday, so till then, have a wonderful week!!!

Proof of Concept

This will be a pretty long post so bear with me.

Today after the market closed:

The plan was to wait till Friday before getting rid of MU, but at this point it doesn't matter so I'll sell it tomorrow. The combined cost of the MU and VZ call was $283.96. Even with the loss of the MU call, the combined worth is now $348.00 ( a 22.5% gain in two weeks). At least the $10 it's now worth will cover the commission costs. The picture you're looking at shows two things.

One: Don't expect a win for every call you make.
Two: Your winnings should cover your losses if the system is followed.

Let me explain what just happened.

This shows what day I bought the options ( "Date Acquired" column ):

Now compare the following two pictures that show the stocks on the days I bought them.

If you spotted a difference then you already see why the MU and VZ calls turned out the way they did.

This system hinges on two things. One is what's called the Williams %R indicator and the other is the MACD Divergence. Don't ask me what that means because I don't know but the point is they both serve as a way to measure momentum. What I've done is combined the two.

For VZ, notice that the Williams %R is above that red line and the green MACD line is above the red one.

For MU, notice that the Williams %R is just about to drop below the red line and the green MACD line is below the red one. 

That is the difference between the outcome of the two. Momentum upward was on the VZ call but not the MU call.

Now because I had limited funds in my actual account, I went ahead and made some purchases in a virtual one based on the same concept.

Here are the current results.

And here's when they were purchased. (The VZ was the same day as the one from above so you already know that story)

Here's what the stock charts looked like on the purchase dates. I didn't draw the line but you can just look at the bold date at the bottom. You can click to enlarge the pictures. And YES. Three of them were purchased today.

Notice how EBAY was behaving just like VZ?
ARCP on the other hand looks like it's about to become like MU. So in truth, buying it was a bad idea. It's probably held up because it will be releasing earnings soon and stocks typically run up till right before an earnings announcement.

What about JBLU and CLF? You can barely see the separation between the green and red MACD line for CLF, but know that the green is above the red. The Williams %R is also above the red line. So that should continue to run up. JBLU looks similar except the Williams %R just dropped below the red line. No need to panic though since it just happened today. If it stays under for three more days, then we need to be out of the position. I don't think that will happen though because JBLU just released its earnings and it matched expectations. But we'll be sticking to the rules.

And what of LUV? Again. Green MACD line is clearly above the red one and the Williams %R is also above so expect a good outcome.

And there's a quick overview of the strategy. Again, I'll be getting rid of MU tomorrow. Probably VZ too since tomorrow makes two weeks. Mathematically, it's better to gain 20% every two weeks and reinvest all funds than to gain 40% in four weeks and reinvest funds. New opportunities are ready almost every day. Let's forge ahead!

BASE HITS. NOT HOME RUNS

Back at it.

The real estate world is harsh without capital.
It's worse if the capital you had was spent on bad marketing.
I believe I really needed to learn the value of money. Just because it's what you intend to "blow" anyway does not mean you should let it run amok.

And so. Down to my last pennies, I've sold the very little dividend producing stocks I had in my secret portfolio to gain about 360 bucks. Enough to venture back into options.

And so. with all the lessons learned.
Let the game begin again.

The goal for sure this time is base hits. Not home runs.

Obedience is Better than Sacrifice

If you are familiar with the story of Saul the first king of the Israelites in the Bible, you'll remember an incident where he failed to strictly adhere to God's instructions resulting in the eventual loss of his kingship. The lesson from that story is "obedience is better than sacrifice".

Well. It applies in this matter as well. The system gives clear signals when to buy and when to sell. I continually listened to when to buy and ignored when to sell thinking I still have time for the values to rebound. Well, things only got worse. As a matter of fact, all positions I have held or am holding end up basically worthless. Unfortunately, I sacrificed ALL of my cash (which is never advised by the way) with the thinking that things will get better when the system clearly told me that it wouldn't.

If you are reading this and have developed some sort of system that you believe will work, stick to it. You will not outsmart it with your emotions. It is when you do something the system has not suggested you should do that you will fail. I was told this when I made my decision to start trading. As is often repeated, "easier said than done".

Well. I'll be taking a long break from trading. I am penniless at present and need to focus on building my real estate business. Once there is income from there, I will come back. But I might secretly attempt to trade again with a little of my tax refund. Actually, I'm quite certain that I will trade. This time, I'll follow the system. But then again, that's what I said last time.

Greed Is BAAAAAAAD!!!!!!

I know I've been missing for some time. Forgive me. I have been focusing my efforts the past week on increasing my knowledge in and growing my real estate business (even thought it has only just been birthed).

But on the subject of options.
I did exactly what I wasn't supposed to do from what I have read and studied.
I deviated from my normal strategy and it resulted in a big win. This big win led me to think I was smarter than the market. So what did I do? I did the same thing again and I won. Big. I don't have the numbers or pictures because I was just going to magically show up with a much larger account value and then tell you what I did (which, by the way was not based on any sound strategy).

You may have already begun to see where I am going with this.
I'll summarize.
The third "bet" was a loss. I figured it was a fluke. The fourth "bet" was a big loss. I thought, "the market just doesn't know what it's doing. The fifth bet was an unbearable loss. I am too embarrassed to show you what the account looks like now.

It is true what the bible said. Money gained quickly is also quickly lost.

Needless to say. I am now returning to my conservative strategy. This means I'll only post an update when an opportunity that fits my fixed rules arises.
Yes, I'm annoyed and frustrated.
But I am also very glad. The first time I deviated from my plan, I actually hoped to lose a significant portion of my account value in order to learn my lesson. Well, it happened. My prayers were answered again.
Here's where the account is now after surging up to a value of $3576.91 (49% gain)

Current account value of $957.68 meaning a loss of -1442.32 or -60.10% loss

Oh what JOY!!!

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