For this year I've set very aggressive monthly targets as my quota. I wanted to see just how near to those targets I can get.I knew it was a challenge since the bar was set really high. Thinking of the targets reminds me of a quote I heard a long time ago. Something that has resonated with me ever since.
It's stuck with me since it meant to always, always, ALWAYS set your goals high. For even if you fail to reach your goals, the effort that it took to try and reach those goals will still bring you a long way from where you started. Going back, this year, I've set my quota to be 25% a month. With the power of compounding interest, that should bring my port to an all time high by the 3rd quarter of the year. At first, I thought it was daunting but the universe seems to be telling me otherwise. How else can I explain the fact that with just 3 winning trades, I've reached DYM status in record time.
Quality over quantity I'd like to think.
I love Excalibur
So my 2017 has been off to a roaring start. Already about a third of the way to reaching my yearend goal. Hopefully I get to catch more monster plays.
In the stock market world, we should all learn how to earn money during uptrends and downtrends. This is because of the simple fact that the market cannot go in one direction all the time. It shifts constantly from one to the other. For my neural networks, one is far easier than the other. Just look for the outlier, the strong stocks and then buy high and sell higher. If it doesn't continue on upwards, then just sell quickly or cut losses accordingly. Simple yet very effective. The other side is buying downtrends or bounce plays. These are the stocks that have been battered and broken and don't seem to have any immediate upside. But if you are able to catch this at the point of reversal, oh so juicy returns in a short amount time! VITA was one of these stocks that came from a recent high and just seemed to resist making any kind of significant bounce. It just continued to go lower and lower and lower for a couple of months. It didn't look like there was any end in sight. Especially when looking at the daily charts. No sign of strength right?
Sometimes what I do, when the daily charts don't give me any clear picture, I switch to the longer time frames. Now, let's take a look at the weekly chart and it looks much better. There seemed to have been a support formed at the 50MA and darvas levels.
When I saw this, I instantly made my plans and set the corresponding buy (as near to the 50MA as possible) and cutloss points (break of the 50MA). I was ready and lying in wait on the first day of the year. Fortunately, I made the right decisions and everything worked according to plan.
Wasn't able to sell at the high of the day but that's OK. It went far and beyond my expectations for the first trade of the year. It's a different kind of rush to be able to buy at the almost absolute bottom. And then watch it bounce in a most spectacular way. I imagine it must be just like what this sterling earthling felt when he caught the cup of beer one-handed in a sea of people.
Here's a toast to catching more fantastic bounce plays in the future.
It is almost the end to this earth year. 2016 has been very fruitful. I think it's appropriate to give time for some quiet reflection.
It was Year 1 of being equipped with the ZF system. My immersion is still ongoing. And I do believe it is something that will not end soon. I still learn something new in every trade that I make. Ms Market is a hard mistress, she takes away as much as she gives. And it seems that I entered in a long term relationship with Ms Market, for better or worse.
With the recent launch of the ZF ORACLE, it has provided me with the perfect time to go back to my trades this year. Analyzing my trades, I still have a natural inclination to buy breakouts. It really is my bread and butter setup. Aside from breakouts though, there was a small collection of bounce trades here and there scattered once in a while. Then there are the TF trades. I still have to tighten my stops for those. There are still a lot of profit leaks in my trades and I plan to plug them eventually.
Going over my trades, I found out that my hit rate for the year is still pretty low, about 43%, so there is a still a lot of room for improvement.
I was pleasantly surprised to find out that there were only a handful of stocks that gave me most of my gains.
Those are some of the trades where in I was able to gain multiple times in a single stock. I think I missed a couple of others but I think I was able to milk these stocks for all they're worth. So after looking back on the past year, it's now time for some resolutions or goals for the new year. One resolution for the new year is to really ramp up my documentation skills. There were a lot of trades that weren't documented properly, real and paper trades. So much potential learning lost. I hope that Excalibur, a tribe project, can help solve that particular weakness of mine. Another resolution is to trade less. Focusing on those perfect setups. I have already started on this and have observed that this trait has been lessened this last quarter of 2016 but in the first two quarters, I had to return some gains/profit due to overtrading. One more goal is to get some more badges. Seeing one of these bad boys in the palm of my hand has really stoked the competitive flames in me. And lastly, will definitely step up my RAK game and have already discussed this with the Mrs Robot. We are now setting goals for this and identifying the potential beneficiaries for each quarter of 2017. That should be something to watch out for.
Ok, that's enough reflection for this robot. Here is some ear candy for you guys. Happy holidays and let's get ready for 2017!
