I put a day order in for Thursday on TLT selling the 101/102 for .23. The only time we've traded higher than seen in the chart below is Sep 08'. This is one of those plays that will tie in to my SPY put hedge in that if I were to lose the max on this trade, meaning yields on the 30-year break under 4%, I can only assume that means equities sold off hard. I used the number of contracts that would set my max possible loss at 1% of trading capital. I'm going to try and stick to 1% per trade for a while and see how things go. Already early on I'm a little uncomfortable looking at the dollar amounts, but I realize I have to look at things in terms of percentages. And trading .5% per trade doesn't make a whole lot of sense unless I'm doing serious volume trading, which I'm not. Also, though I'm comfortable with the smaller dollar amounts used in the past, self admittedly it was too small and capital was not being used efficiently.
Many of you have been reading this blog may have noticed that my blogging frequency has increased over the past few weeks as I got short the market. As you can imagine I am down money since getting short the market, this is the time when most people pull away from posting. But my goal is to stay active and involved and show you that trading is not always rainbows and butterflies. It is times like these that the things I have been sharing over the past couple of weeks are so important. You need to trade small relative to your account. I have a decent short position in the market and my portfolios are set up to make some awesome returns if we finally turn lower. But something I would like to point out is that my account is 70% Cash. I learned a long time ago how important it is to live by the rules you preach. Because of my discipline I am able to continue to hold my positions, I have time and capital on my side. I can't stress enough how important it is not to get to big....


Comments
Post a Comment