Long-Short trade

[wallstreet1928]

ROFLMAO!!

Are you taking the p!ss or what??

no my friend I'm being serious.......

I have just read this thread and got lost with all the jargon, I do live calls and post live trades but I keep it simple.
http://www.trade2win.com/boards/uk-indices/48390-message-ftse-traders.html


entry, exit , stop loss............and i hedge If i believe i have a good trade but a bad entry hence short/long another indices to cover the bad entry until the market is back in my favour again!!

 

[MrGecko]

At end of play on Friday.

Made a HUGE mistake today, traded like a bit if a wanker - I closed the SPX Condor for a loss of $215... it was about to move OTM (my B/E @ expiry price was 750), and I didn't want to get caught out... basically ballsed it up. Up until Friday, it had been a nice little earner.

On the other hand, the equity positions seem to be doing pretty well. The only trade given any serious thought was the F / GM trade, which has turned out to be a real good'un.

Better get cracking with some new ideas, under 50% of the capital is actually doing something!

 

[MrGecko]

Long Amazon, short Barnes and Noble

this trade is about something called a Kindle; basically, they are these electronic book things, and they are taking off. Amazon make the "iPhone" of the electronic book world, and of course can generate revenue from the repeating sales of electronic materials. These might be big over Xmas, so I'm getting in now.

Barnes and Noble, on the other hand, are a regular bookstore. So I give Amazon the edge because:

*they can monopolise the electronic book market and get repeat business

* They can compete with B&N's regular business model (i.e. paper books)

* They have no-where near the overheads or liabilities (land, etc..)

that is about the extend of my fundamental analysis.

AMZN +80 @ 62.12
BKS -300 @ 16.73

 

[MrGecko]

Sold 845 GM @ 1.84 to bring the two back into line... does anybody even care??

 

[MrGecko]

Closed my NAT position - it just aint working out

-60 NAT @ 27.27

 

[luckyd1976]

Long Amazon, short Barnes and Noble

this trade is about something called a Kindle; basically, they are these electronic book things, and they are taking off. Amazon make the "iPhone" of the electronic book world, and of course can generate revenue from the repeating sales of electronic materials. These might be big over Xmas, so I'm getting in now.

Barnes and Noble, on the other hand, are a regular bookstore. So I give Amazon the edge because:

*they can monopolise the electronic book market and get repeat business

* They can compete with B&N's regular business model (i.e. paper books)

* They have no-where near the overheads or liabilities (land, etc..)

that is about the extend of my fundamental analysis.

AMZN +80 @ 62.12
BKS -300 @ 16.73

Good pick here on Amazon side. I've been Long AMZN for awhile. 1st addition Kindle sold out their inventory during summer of 08. Then Christmas 08 they sold all inventory of Kindle1. Amzn is finally getting their head around the Kindle2.0 Inventory levels and this will be a big items for them. My wife has the Sony E-Reader and I have the Kindle. KIndle has the huge advantage in this marketspace!!!

Kindle with it's lit-up page reading environment and it's 30seconds to 3G wireless book downloads, Magazine, newspaper downloads will be here for a long time. And the best part is a product like this will actually embolden more shopping of their site.

my .02 on my favortie product!

 

[MrGecko]

@ Y'days close... New positions added, Closed positions moved, GM entry price updated to reflect the average.

 

[MrGecko]

Ok... BIG drawdown today, but I think it will correct itslef looking at the aftermarket picture (ita all to do w. F and GM as far as I can see).

Anyway, I'm knackared.

 

[MrGecko]

Ok, the Ford and GM trade went further out of line... if you look at the closing prices, something significant must have happenend for them to be this far out of line - I didn;t know what it was, so I closed it out. It then occured to me that the AMZN and BKS trade wasn't going the right way, so I closed that too.... and the OIL ETF...

So, it seemed a sensible idea to close everything out at the end of the month and start again on monday - having learnt some lessons about what it is I will need to do in terms of monitoring the portfolio. This I think has been a costly mistake, in particular I would have preferred to have some way of measuring each pair trades performance over time, the rolling correlations, etc...

A little reflection?

Well some of the trades turned out to be pretty good I reckon, in particular the Ford GM one, which is after all the only one I put any serious consideration into. I did, however, leave alot on the table; the profit I return in Jan is only half what it should have been IMO (actually pretty disappointed with it).

Will restart the portfolio when I have build the necesary S'sheets to examine the performance in the way I want to, and continue in the same vein. Not keeping track of the relative performance has cost me dear.

Month end PnL attached.

FWIW, if you take just the PnL of the trades that were relative value (apart from the Gold ETF, all my directional trades were losers!!), and then compare this with the level of equity actually invested, the PnL is north of 5% - not bad for a market neutral strategy I reckon.

 

[KillPhil08]

update ftw?

 

[tradebunny]

lol... paper, paper!!

It is basically an attempt at running a long-term (largely market neutral) book, instead of jumping in and out all day. The cash balance is set at $100,000, although I am treating it as $100,000,000 - for example, I may choose to put a yield curve position on, in which case I will reduce the $ per tick by 1,000 x what the exchange specifies... get me?

What works on paper might be different in real life. It's hard to calculate emotions in any method that might work on paper.

 

[MrGecko]

update ftw?

re: Update - well, I spent a couple of hours trying to figure out how I would manage my portfolio (portable Apha, 130/30 etc...), but got distracted (six nations?) and forgot about it.

Anyhow; I just wanted to say that my F - GM trade was a knock out.

Long F @ 1.83 (2.56 now trades)
Short GM @ 2.94 (1.80 now trades)

That trade was entirely my own (though I suspect I arrived at the party as the pro's were leaving), and born entirely from the Economist and Wikipedia. Magic.

 

[luckyd1976]

re: Update - well, I spent a couple of hours trying to figure out how I would manage my portfolio (portable Apha, 130/30 etc...), but got distracted (six nations?) and forgot about it.

Anyhow; I just wanted to say that my F - GM trade was a knock out.

Long F @ 1.83 (2.56 now trades)
Short GM @ 2.94 (1.80 now trades)

That trade was entirely my own (though I suspect I arrived at the party as the pro's were leaving), and born entirely from the Economist and Wikipedia. Magic.

Hows the rest of the picks done?