A new trader's diary

[NayaBaccha]

I am amazed at the terms and stuff people use here. I only use the price and volume underneath and that is all I ever need. I may be missing out on some of the good stuff that others may be using to their advantage but I find it a bit OTT to be using too many things. I find it easier to just look at the price and volumes through the day to take a position and my winning trades are way way way more then my loosing ones. I am yet to see a solid trend reversal in a stock while I am in the trade. I only get sharp declines or peaks when others stop losses get triggered and so does mine in such instances and slippages are ugly some times. Looking at the prices movement it looks like most people do not have a market order for their stop loss but I always have a market order for my stoploss hence the high slippages but I dont want to be stuck in there in case there is too big a slide with no sign of coming back and I find it safer to have a market order. I am hoping some experts would show me the light and correct me if I am not doing the right thing here.

 

[NayaBaccha]

From Monday onwards I am going to let my trading account grow instead of taking the gains out every other day. I earlier though that once I start getting it right I would put in some more money but I have noticed that it would be wise to just let the trading account grow by leaving the gains in the account itself.



I am also on the lookout for a better trading platform. I do not like ODIN that much, not that I have compared it with anything else but I personally feel that some simple things are just missing from it and could be done very easily if the developers wanted to do it. I would prefer a clear all possitions option with one or two clicks when there is a need. Another major problem I have is that some times I get logged off for some reason and when I try to login again it says user already logged in... My trades are open at those times and I have no way to make changes during such times and RK Global's phone lines as a rule are "busy" so I just wait it out. I am luck in the sense that it has not happened at a time I place my stop loss order so my positions are kind of safe for a few mins if nothing major happens in the mean time but it is still a big risk.
I have spoken to RKGlobal about this but the customer care guys dont think this is a major problem.

I have heard some good things about RKSV and Zerodha so might aswell open an account with both of them and see how it goes. I need a broker with a flat rate and not be charged per trade as I tend to do multiple trades one after the other and my brokerage fees could add up quickly if I went with zerodha but rksv on the other hand have a monthly thing. I am happy with what rkglobal is charging me but I just want to try out others to see how they are different if they are different atall.

I still dont have a decent charts platform that I can use. I downloaded ambibroker and chartnexus as well but I cant make the heads and tail of any of them. I am just using the live intraday chart from rkglobal and to study the long term trends I am using a website that lets me use a few indicators that I use.

 

[NayaBaccha]

I am thinking about selling all my mutual funds portfolio and start investing myself instead. I checked all the stocks held my the mutual funds I have and found that there are a lot of stocks which are clearly in a downtrend with no signs of a reversal whatsoever and I dont see why I should have my money in those stocks.

Is it a stupid idea? Or should I just do it and only invest in stocks that have a clear uptrend and keep some money in liquid funds or even tax free bonds till the time there is an excellent opportunity?

Is this a stupid idea?

 

[mprithu]

Hi,

I read your trading experience . It was really interesting to read it. Good to know that you are earning from the market in such a short span. Also you have been able to control your emotions to some extent is good sign.

With regards to trading I can suggest you to use a performance monitor which can give you a snapshot of your performance and make you feel good as well. You can have the following fields and prepare an excel file with following fields.

Report Date

Sensex Closing

Portfolio Start Date

Base Capital

Planned Max Risk Capital

Cash

Cost of Holdings

Value of Holdings as on Report Date

No of Winning Trades
Profit from Winning Trades

No of Losing Trades
Losses from Losing Trades

Average Holding Duration

Maximum Holding Duration

Maximum Draw down on Holdings

Profit Booked till date

Absolute Portfolio Value

Trading Days

Total number of trades in the Trading days

% Annual Return on capital employed



With reference to your Mutual Holding Portfolio and other investment, I request you to diversify your portfolio in some Debt Instruments and Liquid Funds. The portfolio allocation is a function of a lot of factors like your age, your financial goals, your income expenditure pattern etc.

Best of Luck

Prithu

 

[NayaBaccha]

@mprithu

Thanks for the input. It does not make sense for me because my trades are all intraday and they only last a couple of mins. The moment price starts moving in the opposite direction I am out of it and most of my trades last less then 3-4 mins. I enter and exit the same scrip multiple times and it would require a lot of work daily to keep a track. Today for instance I entered and exit Ranbaxy 6 or 7 times and each trade lasted only about 2-3 mins and very small size as well to make sure I dont mess up the trend. I sometimes keep buying 100 shares every 2-3 seconds till the trend is going my way and then screw the trend as I exit with a market order and then slap a large market order in the opposite direction and then exit out 100 shares every 2-3 seconds or square off completely if the trend reverses. I could use something that would work automatically but keeping track manually is going to eat up a lot of time and energy that I could use doing something more productive.

 

[NayaBaccha]

Today is the 6th straight session of positive returns. I tend to make more money on the short side. I also need to rethink my strategy even though its been working so far but I feel there is room for improvements. I enter and exit the same stock multiple times making small gains every time and extremely tight stoploss every time. It is hard work and I believe most people would find it too tiring. I need to work on better ways to churning out profits I guess.

Ranbaxy, Tata Steel and Coal India were all good trades today.

 

[NayaBaccha]

I can safely say that I have stopped loosing money in intraday trading. I have only traded intraday until now but I have started trying with options now. I do like the comfort of having a longer time frame.

I bought Ambuja cements Call option Feb 160 total 18000 today at an average price of Rs 3.26 It was pretty tempting to square it today itself at a price of Rs4+ during the day but I find the support at these levels to be very strong so might aswell hold it for a few days and see how it goes. I do realise that I have bought a little too much and having a stoploss would result in huge slippage so no stoploss for the time being so will have to watch this like a hawk every day.

Lesson learnt without a fee : Do not buy more then 1-2 lots so there is an option to put a stop loss and be stopped out with minimal slippage. Ambuja is not very liquid and with 9 lots being sold at market price I would end up with a lot of slippage unless I break it up in 3-4 seperate stoploss orders which sounds like a stupid idea. I will try and get rid of this position as soon as I can and make sure I only buy 1 or 2 lots only from here on.

Options I believe I am learning a little and find it much more profitable with lesser degree of risk involved as compared to intraday trading in stocks.

Intraday trading is a lot of work and I also find it very boring as I cant do anything myself and just sit here punching pre determined numbers.. I believe options involve a lot more work and it is kind of relaxed aswell when I compare to intraday stocks trading.

I need to call up RKGlobal to enable options and futures for me as I only have NSE cash at the moment and the options trading I started today with Ambuja was done using my crappy icici direct account.

I also believe that I would be able to increase the percentage of profitable trades when I dont have to wind up my positions before the end of the day because some times I know that there will be a gap down opening or a gap up on xyz stocks. This gap up or gap down can be slayed with options. Being able to go short for a longer duration is an added plus.

I am officially past the break even and this includes all the losses that I made over the years. I lost Rs100000+ on HPCL back in year 2001 or 2002 I think I am not sure and a few lakhs in 2012 and 2013. I havent taken potential interest on that money. I just needed an idea and I have it.

I have learned that I will not make money if I sit infront of the screen thinking I am going to make money. The only way to make money is to do good trades and make sure I cut losses at the predetermined time. HCL was the only stock I traded in today and I didint trade with a target but only kept moving my stoploss. Volume was fairly good so when I stopped out I didint create too big a spike. Trend did reverse when I stopped out but I didint trade in the opposite direction purely because I got scared.

I plan to trade in options as well from now on because it does not need too much additional work as I will only trade in the stocks I already follow and have a fairly good understanding of which way the price is headed and when to bail out if the trend reverses.

I hope someone could give me some valuable advise on options. I am reading stuff here and there.

 

[pokrate]

Opened my new trading account with RK Global last week and downloaded ODIN once RK Global guys sent me my login id and password. Logged into ODIN and I couldnt understand a thing as I am too used to the ICICDirect's portal who have made a killing from me over the years. I tried trading using tips from the TV guys and ended up eroding my account by Rs5.5Lakhs within 3 days. Yes thats stupid and I am trying not to repeat that. This was back in Jan 2012 so its been a while since I tried doing a day trade.

Day 1 on RK Global Friday 3Rd 2014 :

Transfered Rs30000 and bought Britannia and some random price I cant remember now and made a loss of Rs394 then I bought Britannia again for dilevery at the end of the day as it looked like a good positional thing to me at the time.

Day 2 :

Transfered Rs 300000 into my trading account and tried my hand on ODIN this time as someone very kindly replied to my thread where I asked about how to place an order and put a stop loss.
I was going to buy ITC but ended up pressing F2 and selling instead and when I realised my mistake I cut my loss and was Rs6500 under. Lost my balance I suppose and my ego guided me to buy again and I listened to my ego and went for it (stupid mistake) I bought 6k+ shares on margin and my stop loss triggered within 20 mins and I bought again at lower levels only to sell again at a loss. Price dropped sharply at 3:15 so I bought ITC for dilevery 958 shares in total and I intend to keep it along with 25 shares of Britannia that I bought on Friday.
Was under by another 15000+ by the end of the day. Only consolation being Aban offshore that rose 9%+ which is sitting in my core portfolio.

I am stupid and driven by emotions.

I used whatever was in my account and the leverage to buy one single script.

I even tried to transfer another Rs5lakhs from my bank account but thankfully slapped by a message saying I have already used up my daily transfer limit (didint know there was such a thing)

I bought a book Trading for a living by A elder and read 200 pages at one go on Sunday enening and understood very well that I would loose money as soon as I mix emotions with my trading decisions and I promised myself that I wont do it... I broke my promise and I did exactly that.

Learnt a lesson : Never put all your trading account money into a single trade. I will hopefully remember this when the market opens tom morning.


Moral of the day : Knowing something and using that knowledge are two different things. I knew I shouldnt be making impulsive decisions but I did. I need to work on self control and discipline and stop being stupid.

Stupidity will cost me money. I wont be stupid if I want to stop loosing money.

Study pivot levels and daily see how Nifty, your favorite stock react to pivot levels.
Using favorable time for trading is primary thing, which no one talks about. When your time is bad, your favorite strategy will fail and vice versa.
Rule of thumb : After every un-successful trade dont trade for 3 days minimum. And only use less than 50% of your money for trading every time. Trade only in SBIN, ITC, DLF, NIFTY for 2 years.

 

[NayaBaccha]

I started Nifty options and DLF a few days ago.

Rising gold prices and redemption pressure on India funds in Europe and America give me a strong feeling about the upcoming break down in Nifty. I am waiting for a crash. It might come today.

NIFTY may go down by atleast 70-80 points in todays session. On rise I plan to buy more 5950 Feb PE. I am not sure who those people are who are going short on puts. If yo ask me... You are screwed and you are trapped.

I am a newbie and I hope to learn a new lesson before the 26th today that when my own understanding of the market says that its ripe for a fall then buy puts left rigt and centre regardless of what others are doing.. Or may be not I am making a bit of money on 6200 CE so will buy more 5950 puts today and stay put for the coming "crash" .

I am only looking at the Gold prices and the DM's redemption of India funds as an indicator for a crash in NIFTY.