Thursday, May 21, 2009

As The market Dips Conflicting and Confusing Trend Opinions

If your like me and have gone through a couple market trend swings its interesting to see the experts we look up to often have very different opinions of the short to intermediate trends which are the most important of active trading. If you rely on someone else to tell you the trend before you trade this can be a big problem and certainly will not leave you with much confidence. Who knows who's right? I think it is very important before you start trading to learn how to read the market and make your own calls on the trends. Don't leave it to someone else. If you don't achieve this level you will never have confidence in what your doing and be second guessing everthing you do. Spend the time on technical training and learn to make the call and sleep with it. And of course a little protection in the way of the right stops and portfolio management sure doesn't hurt for the times when you will only be human and make the wrong one. For a good example of someone who's doing this right ,in my opinion , go to the Real Time Traders Community Room and check out Andy's weekly posture posting. Heres a guy who makes his own call every week, shares it and trades by it. I think it's a great example of my point. I'd like to hear your comments and questions on this one.
Have a Great Memorial Day Weekend!
John

Monday, April 20, 2009

Enter the Crash

So Friday I was feeling pretty good about expiration week. Closed out some decent trades. Let a couple puts expire worthless. Did an April naked put on Wed on C @ a $4 strike and bought it back Friday under 3.90 and still made money so I was feeling like a rockstar on that. Today I got stopped out of a long call on BMC but I have a put verticle on it that still looks ok. Even thought everything else is down with the market my overall positions look ok to me other than most of them are ultimately bullish. I'm still not very comfortable right now with neutral plays. How did expiration treat everyone else and how are you starting off the May cycle?

Monday, April 13, 2009

April Expiration Week - What Is & Isn't Working?

Ok guys here we go down to the wire for April. Any thoughts going into expiration? I didn't do very well the last two months with neutral trades likes Iron Condors and Calendars in part because of the changing market directions but also because I misread or mismanaged the positions through inexperience. Have to get much better and controling the risk and downside. I did do pretty good on calls and puts , mainly naked puts and credit verticles although these had smaller overall returns per trade. What is and isn't working for you?

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Welcome Newbie Traders

Welcome to the "The Newbie Trader" The basic purpose of this blog is to help us "Newbies" learn to trade by interactively sharing and exchanging ideas, experiences and references. Feel free to leave your thoughts or ask questions as a beginning trader here. If you as excited about learning to trade as me this should be the start of something fun!