cjbarnaby.com

Using my new method I put some trades on… on the 19/11/2008 and thought Id review them here.

I am doing long strategies as I don’t feel comfortable with shorting at the moment. AFAIK its a little too risky considering I am so green to this avenue of trading.

So here they are for review:

QBEE5 - P - Jan 09 - 22.50 - I paid $2.55 - now $2.35 > This one is clearly yet to pay and may be killed for liquidity but considering this is a paper trade… idgaf and will let it run.

WOW40 - P - Jan 09 - 25.50 - I paid $2.085 - now $0.90 > Again….. a phizzler. I would have clearly dumped this if i needed liquidity. Again… considering this is paper… idgaf.

ANZG1 - C - Jan 09 - 13.00 - I paid 2.085 - now 2.04 > Another phizzler… the banks have not been very good to me lately. Again… lots of time to expiry… so this is a holder all things considered.

SUNCT7 - C - Jan 09 - 6.75 - I paid 1.055 - now 1.41 > Success!! Still its only a small move simply because its a financial institution and they have been notoriously weak during this major bear market all due to their potential exposure to extra losses. Looking at the chart I see that it isn’t a time to sell so I’d still sit on this one.

MAPBS7 - C - Jan 09 - 1.90 - I paid 0.215 - now .185 > ?? WTF ?? the price is up on the stock yet this one is down ?? This MUST be the time decay thing that options have…

AMPBM7 - C - Jan 09 - .65 - I paid 0.65 - now 0.52 > Again… hardly any gains here… Calls in a major bear market hard for making money on.

NABSZ - C - Jan 09 - 19.50  - I paid 2.48 - now 2.09 > Ow

WBCD37 - C - Jan 09 - 16.00 - I paid 2.215 - now 2.745 > Success!! small steps small steps
MQGFI7 - C - Jan 09 - 20.84 -  I paid 5.79 - now 9.53 > Very nice!! I would pull this one if it wasn’t a paper trade. Because it isn’t I will still ride it until I see a reversal signal.

OSH73 - P - Jan 09 - 4.75 - I paid .69 - now .45 > This one was in the money this week but I didn’t exit as I am expecting a bigger down between now and Jan.

So all up… one big winner and lots of small losses but arent real losses luckily.

What I learned: Doing Long Calls are a lot harder in a major bear market and Calls signals are probably better used as exit points rather than entry points.

general news

I recently was on the www.optionetics.com site and read a great article that pointed me to this amazing free software.

The Hubb Investor is an amazing piece of charting and portfolio tracking software that covers all major markets worldwide and can pull options chains up on all optionable stocks! This tool is so nifty I now use it daily.

Check it out on www.hubb.com its on the front page as a free download. I found no crapware in it and it installed cleanly and works amazingly.

They also had on their site an option drool tool called OptionGear… you can read more about it here:

http://www.optiongear.com/

Covers EVERYTHING you ever thought about to do with options and more.

Its on my ‘to buy’ list to help me with future options investment.

C

general news

Hi All!,

My site has been revised… I am hoping hackers dont sql inject garbage into this one. I am keep this basic as I was getting totally over having to rebuild things from scratch. This time I will keep it simple and stupid with no plugins that are targets for hackers. Enough complaining….

Enjoy.

C

general news

One thing that I have realised that I needed to discover is that to trade options I first needed to understand what type of trader I am.

I have since discovered through a series of bad exits that I do get caught up in emotion and this means that short term trades are TERRIBLE for my personality.

I have also banned myself from looking at the markets unless I am actively buying or selling according to my TRADING PLAN.

I have developed a small amount of chart reading skill and noticed a pattern that I will reveal sooner or later once I have proven it to work.

So far it works on paper trades but I have been too dumb ass anxious to let it run on real trades. When real money is involved things actually change. I didnt realise this until I was in the markets and doing it. Before that moment I thought I was immune to such inanity but I too discovered I am pathetic inane and emotional and MUST NOT LOOK AT THE MARKETS WHILST THEY ARE LIVE! as I tend to exit waaay tooo eearly.

I recently calculated all the trades over the past two months and kicked myself hard for the amount of money that I have missed through my ‘exit strategy’.

I now have finally unveiled myself as an emotional trader. This is a great thing to have in my self understanding as it will enable me to stop being an emotional trader by working around it.

The final nail in the coffin was a trade i put on when i was at my ‘bottom’ for a company that I should have been buying a call for. I put on a put thinking my fear based information was right and the TRADING PLAN was WRONG and had to be ignored!! Stupido! Now the markets have gone hard against this trade and its bleeding horribly. I know it will be in the money by the end of the expiry but until then it sits there glaring at me like it shares some secret knowledge with me. I don’t even check on how much its lots anymore…. thats how much confidence it has given me! Weird!

Sooooo… its a call market… afaik and this is also major bear market and putting calls on is very risky but do-able if you FOLLOW YOUR TRADING PLAN!

I am now sitting back making art and IGNORING THE MARKETS WHILST THEY ARE OPEN as a strategy. At the end of day I fire up my charts and go through the numbers looking for signals of impeding share doom stampede so I can ready myself to be positioned for another put that will pay rather than cynically glare at me.

C

general news