Rough Day for Automated and Manual

May 14th, 2008

Some of the most frustrating days aren’t when you lose a big wad of money. It’s usually days when you hesitate and miss good trades or see open profits evaporate and turn into losses. That’s what happened yesterday. In the long run, you have to tolerate those kinds of days to be in position to have very, very good days. That doesn’t make it any more enjoyable when it happens, though.

I ended up down 2.5R or so for the automated trades and down a little over 1R in the manual trades.

Here’s a chart in CSIQ that went from at least +3R to -0.33R. No fun!

Charts automatically generated by StockTickr

Related posts:

1. Increasing Risk with Automated Trading +4R, Manual Trading -2R
2. ATS Breakeven, Manual Trade in AMLN +1R
3. Why Automated and not Another Manual System?
4. Introducing Automation into your Manual Trading System
5. Automated Trades +7R, Manual -2R

Posted in General | 4 Comments »

4 Comments

1. Sunyata Said,

   May 14, 2008 @ 8:50 am

   Hey Stocktickr,

   What was your profit target for this trade? I am wondering why you did not take any profits when you were in the money.

   Best,
   S

2. Dave Said,

   May 14, 2008 @ 9:54 am

   @Sunyata

   Thanks for the comment – very good question. I don’t use profit targets in my trading. I used to but found they just get in the way. It would have worked out well here, obviously, but they would hurt the profitability of my system if I used them across a large number of my trades.

   Look for a full post soon on this topic. Thanks!

3. Ryan Said,

   May 15, 2008 @ 2:25 pm

   Did you post the criteria for your automated system yet?

4. Dave Said,

   May 16, 2008 @ 1:58 am

   @Ryan

   I’ve got several posts in my drafts that I’m putting the final touches on. Thanks for the reminder!

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