Wanna share your stock trading strategies? - Page 6

Wrecked944 · 02-15-2006, 10:06 AM

02/15/2006 Last night Cramer pumped three stocks: CALP, PBR, and STX. PBR trades as an ADR so I stayed away. And STX showed little after hours trading activity. So I decided to trade CALP. Unfortunately, Ameritrade put some sort of restriction on CALP which was not at all clear from their warning messages. So I was only able to short about $50,000 worth of stock. I have had similar problems with Ameritrade before. And I have found their "help" function to be almost worthless. Anyway, I was only able to short 7000 shares and my order was filled at 9:30am at $6.80 ($0.57 above the previous close). The price then fell in an orderly way and I set my first trailing stop for half my position at just six cents and had it filled at 9:33am for $6.71. Then the price did a small spike and dropped again. So I entered my final trailing stop at 9:45 am for four cents and got out at $6.65 at 9:46am. My net gain for the day was only $783 because of the limited number of shares I was allocated. Sucks to be me.

So anyway, it has been a month and a day of trading this strategy and I am up about $6,500 - or only about 10%. That's pretty sad and pathetic when you think about it. At that rate it will be 8 or 9 months before I can double my portfolio. I was making more when I did momentum plays on the closed end international funds last year. Heck, I can stand up in my cubicle right now and see a colleague who has multiplied his net worth by 17 times since September by trading in and out of a small collection of well researched penny stocks. And if I turn my head to the right I can see another colleague who is scheduled to retire in June using the money he made trading oil stocks. So I am feeling like this Cramer Effect, while amusing, is pretty much a dog. I assume there must be Pelicans out there who have better strategies and I'd be curious to hear them.

9dreizig · 02-16-2006, 10:11 AM

Uhm,, gee Janus,, does anyone do any real work at your place of employment?? LOL
T

Wrecked944 · 02-16-2006, 10:38 AM

Well, I work in the IT department of a major financial institution that handles mutual funds processing...so it isn't unusual to see all kinds of trading screens and stock quotes etc on people's screens...in fact, trading is one of the few "acceptable uses" of the corporate internet according to company policy...none of us has access to any kind of "insider information"...but when you spend your whole life neck deep in the financial world, you can't help but learn how it works. And so nearly everyone on the floor has some sort of strategy going on at any given time. And the company does not discourage it.

turbo6bar · 02-16-2006, 07:38 PM

It may be boring, januscole, but what about http://www.protectyourstock.com/

TyFenn · 02-18-2006, 11:20 PM

Ever thought about trading commodity futures? Some serious coin there.

I'm kind of suprised no one else has chimed in either, honestly.

What's the story with your coworker and the penny stocks? I followed a couple back in 1999 or 2000. One moved .30 the two others never moved at all really.

Wrecked944 · 06:54 AM

The fellow who does the penny stocks treats them like any other investments. He picks a small number of companies and researches the ever living crap out of them. Specifically, he poured a lot of money into a stock called GTE - which does some sort of WiMax technology involving high altitude balloons. Most analysts apparently thought the company was a sham but he was convinced they were for real. So when they started to get real orders and such, the stock price exploded and he made a mint. Then he moved on to a stock called SDRG which also went en fuego. Now he is hot on a stock called GZFX. They compete directly with Netflix except they rent both movies and games. I am highly skeptical that GZFX will succeed against Netflix. But I guess that is the point. He must have done some serious research and concluded that the skeptics are wrong. And when he is right (and the skeptics are wrong), he goes laughing all the way to the bank.

As for my other colleague who has become rich off of oil stocks, you can ask him about his trading strategies in person if you like. His name is Vito and he is my regular co-driver at Autocross. His strategy is actually pretty fascinating. He doesn't just buy oil stocks. Instead, he has a complicated algorithm by which he can predict when to enter the oil sector and when to sell out. Doing this, he trades in and out of oil and benefits from the natural volatility of the sector to maximize his gains. He started with just $5000 about twenty-odd years ago and is now ready to retire.

Wrecked944 · 10-16-2006, 06:54 AM

Just in case you boys forgot about trading the Cramer Effect...here is my trade for today...

Monday, Oct 16 - Friday night Cramer pumped three stocks: Nice Systems (NICE), Riverbed Technologies (RVBD), and Arena Pharm (ARNA). RVBD moved up over 16% during the show so it was too freakishly volitile to trade. That left ARNA and NICE. The order to sell short 1270 shares of NICE was executed at 9:30:22am at $31.78 (85 cents above the previous close) and the order to sell short 2500 shares of ARNA was executed at 9:30:17am at $16.32 ($1.11 above the previous close). NICE did almost nothing as the price hovered right around $31.75 with little fluctuation. So the position was closed out at 9:37am at $31.82 for a small loss of about $70.80 (after broker fees). ARNA, however, plummetted after the open and the position was cashed out at 9:32am at $16.08 for a gain of about $580 (after broker fees). Net result was about a $500 gain on the day.

Burnin' oil · 10-16-2006, 07:38 AM

Janus,

I was wondering when we would get an update. How have the last eight months gone?

sammyg2 · 10-16-2006, 08:36 AM

WARNING: immediately after posting in this thread i started recieving hundreds of spam e-mails about stock picks and such, most of them absolutely bogus. Someone is phishing this thread and this board.

If you are out there, I will not read any of your spam, period. Even if you send a spam offering a zillion dollars with no strights attached, I will not pay attention to it. You are scum of ther earth and deserve to be treated as such.

SlowToady · 10-16-2006, 01:22 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by sammyg2
WARNING: immediately after posting in this thread i started recieving hundreds of spam e-mails about stock picks and such, most of them absolutely bogus. Someone is phishing this thread and this board.

If you are out there, I will not read any of your spam, period. Even if you send a spam offering a zillion dollars with no strights attached, I will not pay attention to it. You are scum of ther earth and deserve to be treated as such.

I, too, have been receiving large numbers of bogus stock emails but wrote it off to conincidence due to all the other spam I get (fscking webmaster addresses...).

What pisses me off is that they are starting to use images so OutLook can't filter them as easily (by, say, keyword, as it would with text email) and when you have 150 of them on any given day...

Janus, thanks for the update.

Wrecked944 · 10-16-2006, 04:35 PM

Wow, I also get a lot of "penny stock" spam but did not associate it with this web site. How the hell do they get our email addresses from a BBS forum thread? And better question: Why send stock pick emails to car enthusiasts? Theyt must have a lot of free time, eh?

Anyway, to answer Burnin Oils question: I made around $10k last February. Then I spent much of the Spring charting extensively and trying to trade every possible angle I could imagine. I tried cashing out at 10am instead of using trailing stops. I tried shorting the stocks *during* the 6pm broadcast. I tried buying long during Cramers daily "Stop Trading" segment on CNBC. I tried double dipping between 10m and and 11am. And some of those strategies made big gains *and* big losses. But nothing really worked as well as the simple strategy of just selling short at the open and buying back on the first dip. If the price goes up or stays stagnent in the first ten minutes, I cash out right away. If it goes down, I cash out after two upticks in a row. Thats it. Nothing complicated or exciting.

I also took a few months off from trading during the summer. I had some hard core programming work to do and so I had no time for trading (each trade takes more prep time than you think). I did not check the market every day but I got the impression the Cramer Effect fizzled out from late Spring to early Fall. I dont know why and did not have time to research it. I also do not know why it came back in September. I am open to theories. Maybe it was due to low TV ratings during the summer?

As for the spamming, I will gladly stop posting to this thread to let it die and frustrate the spammers. ANd for the record, I am with Sammyg2. I NEVER make trades based on unsolicited emails.

Owain · 10-16-2006, 04:51 PM

I think its just coincidence. I've posted in this thread and didn't get any stock spam today.

Either way I think the value of your experience by far outweighs the nuisance of a little spam. We have to deal with that anyway. Thanks for posting your update.

sammyg2 · 10-16-2006, 05:09 PM

BTW, I've also started receiving stock spam from people disguised as rennlist posters. Sometimes it will actually say it's from the 911 list or whatever. Maybe that;s where it came from.

Either way, I pulled all my money out of refining for the time being (since early August) and put it all in small caps funds until something jumps out at me. I'm dabbling a little in pfizer and an airline yet to be disclosed but it's a small amount and basically just a game I'm playing. High risk based on rumors, nothing more.
I'll prolly get back into independent oil companies in early spring.