Since august is coming to an end, I decided to take some time this weekend to go over some of my trades this month. I will focus of three of them, two winning and one losing.
The first one is probably my favorite, a winning trade of SCVL opened on 08/08 at 20.85 and closed on 08/21 at 23.96. This is not incredible profits but 3.11/share is nothing to shy away from (for my needs anyway and for a beginner). I also like it because it looks like a classic swing. One negative, my entry could have been a lot lower, looking at the chart now we can see how I got in near the high for the day. An entry under 20 would have been much better. My exit was better but not perfect either, in the upper half of the range for the day.
The second trade is KCI, entered on 8/7 @ 26.84 and exited on 8/21 @ 26.69. Longuer than I would like a swing trade open for but it was running flat for a while and I was waiting to see where it was heading. Even a tight stop would have kept this position open for a bit. I am actually still uncertain where it is heading at the moment and could actually progress higher but I would rather be on the sidelines for now. My entry was too high again (upper 80% of the range it looks like) and my exit was right around the middle of the day’s range.
The third review for this post is the losing trade of CCBI, opened on 8/8 @ 15.88 and closed on 8/11 @ 15.82. I was running this one with a very tight stop, which preventing me from recovering (but also from losing more so…). I also jumped in way too early. Had I waited a bit, I would have gotten in around 15.80 and rode the real swing back up to 15.90 on 8/24. I wanted to highlight this one as a lesson learned. My entry was near the middle of the range for the day. My exit was triggered by a stop so it’s hard to judge.
Overall, I am not unhappy with the results. I am learning a lot which is part of the paper trading process. If I could do another month similar to this one, I would consider starting with a little money. The result is nothing to write home about but at least:
- my record keeping satisfies me
- my risk is measured and controlled
- even though I turned out more negative trades than positive ones so far, my average gains are greater than my average losses.
One thing I will try to improve are my entries. One my trigger price hits, I tend to buy right away which is somewhat silly I guess. Once the trigger hits, I should consider the stock a purchase to be made that day and then look at daily charts to find a decend entry. Problem is I do not trade full time and sometimes, I want to focus on something else during market hours and rely on limit and stop orders pre-set the night before or the morning of. This will never yield really good entries or exits I guess.
Stay tuned I guess.