Hey Guys,
The market is still volatile. It's traveled more than 60 points just in the last several hours. This volatility ride isn't over yet.
On the Live Positions page, I added an "Equity Curve" chart to the site. A few subscribers inspired the idea, and I think a lot of people might find it helpful to see. You can find it if you scroll down to the area where it lists all the closed trades since inception.
It's cool because it shows the journey my account has been on. Notice that there have been a lot of sharp dips in account value along the way, just like the one I'm experiencing now. This year has had so many volatility spikes! Notice also that some of my most profitable surges have come right out of the dips.
I hope that this chart helps convey that:
1) Clearly drawdowns are part of the journey. I've lived through a lot of them so far.
2) Drawdowns don't always mean doom and gloom. In my journey thus far, they have been temporary states that don't last forever.
That said, there is real risk and no guarantee what the future holds, and certainly that equity curve doesn't convey all the possible market conditions we might encounter.
As for my current portfolio, I bought COF this morning. I bought the stock in my main account and the options in my extra options account. I have a lot of exposure right now with financial tickers, and those don't seem to be very happy right now. Let's see what happens over the next few trading days.
I closed a ton of options positions today, all for losses. As of the time I'm typing this, the site does not yet reflect those closed positions. The reason is I've found that on Friday mornings in particular, I'm spread quite thin! Each morning, my very top priority is finding new trades, and posting those trades to the website immediately. On Friday mornings, I also have to manually close out all my expiring options positions. I also like to have the website chat open in case pressing questions come up from any subscribers in the first couple hours of trading. I'm just one guy and I can't do it all, so if something has to get de-prioritized, I will typically choose the loading of closed trades to the site.
To my mind, this is an ok sacrifice to make because I tell everyone up front the exact protocols I use for exiting trades. For options, I close the position either if it hits the profit target or otherwise first thing in the morning on expiration Friday. For stocks and futures, I close the position either if it hits the profit target or stoploss, or otherwise first thing in the morning on the "close by" date. So the idea is that while you might want to keep close tabs on my "new" trades, you shouldn't need to wait for me to post a "closed" trade in order to exit it. I already specify up front exactly when I will be closing the trade, and you can follow my approach without waiting for me to update the site. I will always follow the exit rules of the trade as posted on the website (unless I make a mistake like I did with LULU!).
Also, sometimes with options, I can't even close the position in the morning because there are no buyers. So for cases like that, I can't post the closed position until after the market closes any way since I am forced to let it expire worthless. In addition, sometimes I leg out of my option spreads (as discussed in the second video on this page). Those are other reasons my closed options trades in particular may not immediately show up on the site.
If you have any questions or feedback, I'd love to hear from you.