So I thought to peak interest I would start my trading review with a screen shot of my worst trade ever. Sorry to my trolls no I did not lose 1M on DRYS, I had a decent chunk boxed in another account but November as a whole I finished down about 200K. I now have this screenshot on my desk reminding me the markets can humble you very quickly.
First I have to apologize for my lack of twitter use. When I joined a few years ago twitter was a new hot social media platform for me to explore. Lately I have just been extremely bored with twitter. While it does have some great benefits if you follow the right people, it's also polluted with stupidity. Furthermore when a low float idea is posted on twitter it can seem to get very crowded pretty quick and I think certain chat rooms can purposely try to squeeze shorts out. Those are a few reasons I've been a bit quiet lately.
2016 financially was my best year ever. I was up about 50% from 2015 and this marks my 5th year in a row of increased net income by 10% or more from the previous year. There are several reasons for this and I will get into that in a bit. I think I did several things well in 2016 and have room for improvement as well.
95% or more of my income from equities remains to be made on the short side. I continue to believe that as a trader the big money is made on the short side. I have never had the patience to successfully swing trade long positions and I'm not interested in trying to scalp long setups. I'm not saying going long whether it be intraday or swing trading is wrong but it's just not for me. I have never in my life been able to buy a stock like SPU at 5 and hold for 10-15-20 a week or two later. I can year after year find overbought stocks and ride them all the way back down though. Again for me this is where the big money is made. I do go long but it is rare and my patience is not the best.
In 2016 my biggest month was July around 750k in profits from OPTT KONE SPU. My worst month was November at -200k from DRYS. At one point in November I was down around 700k but made a good chunk back on the shippers SINO ESEA DRYS. The majority of my income continues to come from the big overbought setups where I can hold these short for 2-4 weeks.
The things I did well in 2016 were continuing to add size to my golden setups and cutting losses very quick (outside of my DRYS trade). Usually when I get into a position I like to be right immediately. I am never one to scale into a losing position and add add add. If I start a position and it immediately goes against me I will sometimes immediately cut it and look for re-entry. This has saved me from getting squeezed many times before. Also like I mentioned I added more size to my golden setups. I have never had a problem putting my entire equity account on the line in 1 position. But again when doing so I have a tight stop loss in place. Also I try to remain focused on the best setups out there. I know exactly where I’m profitable and what types of trades I usually get into trouble on. For me personally the big money is in the big setups and when a big setup comes around I give it my 100% undivided attention.
I have been trading for 10 years now and have always been primarily focused on technical analysis. Watching the chart with price and volume has always been my strong point. My weakness has always been the fundamental side. This past year I got a new trading setup with 6 monitors (I recently just increased to 8 monitors) and now have streaming news filings and updates on 2 of my screens. Compared to some of the better researchers out there I'm still pathetic no doubt about it. Compared to where I was 2 years ago I'm night and day better. No doubt about it when a trader can combine fundamental and technical analysis the sky is the limit.
To summarize my strong points this year:
2016 financially was my best year ever. I was up about 50% from 2015 and this marks my 5th year in a row of increased net income by 10% or more from the previous year. There are several reasons for this and I will get into that in a bit. I think I did several things well in 2016 and have room for improvement as well.
95% or more of my income from equities remains to be made on the short side. I continue to believe that as a trader the big money is made on the short side. I have never had the patience to successfully swing trade long positions and I'm not interested in trying to scalp long setups. I'm not saying going long whether it be intraday or swing trading is wrong but it's just not for me. I have never in my life been able to buy a stock like SPU at 5 and hold for 10-15-20 a week or two later. I can year after year find overbought stocks and ride them all the way back down though. Again for me this is where the big money is made. I do go long but it is rare and my patience is not the best.
In 2016 my biggest month was July around 750k in profits from OPTT KONE SPU. My worst month was November at -200k from DRYS. At one point in November I was down around 700k but made a good chunk back on the shippers SINO ESEA DRYS. The majority of my income continues to come from the big overbought setups where I can hold these short for 2-4 weeks.
The things I did well in 2016 were continuing to add size to my golden setups and cutting losses very quick (outside of my DRYS trade). Usually when I get into a position I like to be right immediately. I am never one to scale into a losing position and add add add. If I start a position and it immediately goes against me I will sometimes immediately cut it and look for re-entry. This has saved me from getting squeezed many times before. Also like I mentioned I added more size to my golden setups. I have never had a problem putting my entire equity account on the line in 1 position. But again when doing so I have a tight stop loss in place. Also I try to remain focused on the best setups out there. I know exactly where I’m profitable and what types of trades I usually get into trouble on. For me personally the big money is in the big setups and when a big setup comes around I give it my 100% undivided attention.
I have been trading for 10 years now and have always been primarily focused on technical analysis. Watching the chart with price and volume has always been my strong point. My weakness has always been the fundamental side. This past year I got a new trading setup with 6 monitors (I recently just increased to 8 monitors) and now have streaming news filings and updates on 2 of my screens. Compared to some of the better researchers out there I'm still pathetic no doubt about it. Compared to where I was 2 years ago I'm night and day better. No doubt about it when a trader can combine fundamental and technical analysis the sky is the limit.
To summarize my strong points this year:
1. Increase position size on the best setups
2. Cut losses fast. I can survive a long time taking 2-3k paper cut losses. I can't survive very long not cutting something like DRYS
3. Improved my fundamental analysis
What hurt me in 2016 and where can I improve:
November was my only negative month and that was because of DRYS. Honestly I don't even know how I held it short from 15-115 before it halted. It was completely against every rule I stand for. At 30 I thought it was overbought, at 60 I thought this is ridiculous the end is here, at 80 I pretty much crapped my pants and 35 dollars later the POS finally halted. Luckily I was partially boxed on the position otherwise I would have been down 1.4m or so. The only reasoning at this point that I have for not covering sooner was my arrogance. By the time June/July rolled around I was already up from 2015 and I guess got cocky. That is definitely the worse thing a trader can do. Arrogance is never good and as a trader it can be deadly. My rules should have got me out of DRYS around 18-20 for good. Instead I decided to box my shares at this level and then unboxed every 10-20 dollars higher when it looked like it was going to break down. The problem was that it was supported at every level. After the un-halt on DRYS I completely closed the position with about a 700K loss. I really thought about taking a week off at that point, but knew my addiction would not let me go. Luckily the very next day was my best day of the year recouping roughly 1/2 that loss and I continued to swing DRYS short for the following few weeks. I still think that POS is overvalued here at 3 and I short any pop in that name. As you can tell I still hold a grudge.
I can’t imagine the day where I stop trading as I’m addicted but it also can be a very stressful career. After KBIO 2015 and DRYS 2016 it confirmed my thought in something. I like to have some revenue stream outside of trading. A year ago I started buying some farmland here in Missouri and have recently purchased a bit more. I always think it’s good to diversify as long as it does not take away from your primary focus. I will definitely not get rich quick off farmland but it has appreciated around 5% for the past 100 years and I collect a yearly rent check for an additional 6% ROI. After owning several rentals apartments, condos ect., I can say land is one of the most stress free, low maintenance investments out there and provides a place where for me to hunt fish. I will likely continue to put a portion of my trading profits in outside investments in the years to come but obviously trading will remain 100% of my focus.
Hopefully this review was helpful and I wish everyone a healthy and prosperous 2017
