Hi Guys,
First the correction: I posted an options trade on AAPL this morning and accidentally indicated an expiration date that already passed. It took me several minutes to realize the mistake and fix it, but now it's showing the correct expiration date of November 19.
I bought another big batch of positions today. Every day the last couple weeks there have been so many trades that set up. Today in the main account, I bought AAPL and INFO. In the low-priced account I bought APO and CLVT. And in the extra options account I bought options for AAPL, CBOE, and NOW. Every day seems to be a tidal wave of new trade opportunities, and I can see a ton more in the pipeline when I do my scans. In my experience this is not typical. There might be a couple days a week with a flood of trade opportunities in a standard week, but to see them keep pouring in day in and day out for a sustained period is pretty rare.
My AVLR position hit its stoploss this morning. It almost hit the stoploss earlier in the week, then climbed all the way back up to breakeven only to fall right back down to the stoploss. You never can tell where a stock price is going next.
Rather than get caught up in wishing that a stock price would go a particular direction, I like to think of my trading results in terms of odds. Based on back testing and experience, I know that there will be plenty of losses. I know that there will even be some agonizing losses where I was close to victory and it turned into a loss, or where the price went straight down after I bought the stock. These things are just about certain to happen from a statistical odds-based perspective, so rather than sweat it when they happen, I look at the experience through the lens of probabilities. If I know it's likely that there will be losses like this, then why be upset about it? Back tests show that there might have been plenty of losses just like the AVLR one over the course of decades, so when those types of losses happen I don't have to stress about it and instead I can choose to look at it more as a statistical inevitability. I've noticed that thinking of my trade results in terms of probabilities makes them easier for me to accept.
If you have any questions or feedback, I'd love to hear from you.