I’ve now caught up on retroactively assigning nearly all the trades posted on this site to their proper category(ies). What this means is that you can go to any of the three trade categories (set-ups, active or complete trades) and view all stocks/etf’s in that category. Besides being a very fast & convenient way to view all the posts on a particular trade via just clicking on the symbol, it is also a way to review the history and performance of the past trades posted on this site. I’ve been side-tracked for a while on getting this feature incorporated into the site and that caused me to put on the back burner the performance tracking spreadsheet that I was working on. Currently under the “Performance” section at the top of the page are the highlighted trades for January (the first full month the site was operational and posting trade ideas). I will not be able to wrap up the February trades performance and as good as January was, February was even better. Hopefully I will be able to start on the March and April trades very soon as well. Some of the biggest benefits of this new system allowing you to click on any symbol in the completed trades category are:
– Educational: One of the reasons that I started this site was a proxy for my own trading journal. I now have a very streamlined and efficient way to review my past trades in order learn from both past successes as well as failures. It will also help me study how a particular stock or etf has acted or traded in similar technical patterns in the past, as I often like to re-visit and trade the same stocks over and over.
As users of this site, both novice and experienced, I think you will find that studying the notes and charts on past trades, especially with the step-by-step string of charts that give a nice pictorial view of the trade starting from before it even was a trade (i.e.- a set-up) all the way through to the completion of the trade (i.e.-final target or stop out) to be a very useful educational resource in your own personal quest to become a better trader.
-Performance: As a user of this site, you are able to not only get an accurate read on the performance of the trade ideas posted here but more importantly, what I think sets this site apart from any other that I’ve ever come across, is the ability not only to recognize stocks that are on the verge of making quick and profitable moves based on the techincals, but more importantly the ability to very accurately, often within pennies, identify the levels (targets) that those stocks will hit before reversing or finishing the bulk of their explosive moves. Most experienced investors and traders will agree that deciding what to buy and when to buy it is the easy part…the hard part is determining when to sell.
Of course not every trade posted here is successful nor does every stock make a permanent U-turn at my final target but I think if you study the past trades on this site you will see that a considerable amount of the trades posted here do. When viewing past trades, pay attention to how even a long-term swing trader or investor can often benefit from micro-managing their trades around the various target levels. e.g.- If swing trading a stock from an entry of $10 to a final target of $30, one might be able to reverse the trade or take partial profits along the way at the sub-targets at $15, 20, and 25 (while re-entering to a full position on the pullbacks or when those sub-targets are taken out). These sub or early targets are also very useful for managing stops and protecting profits on trades as well.
A couple of things to keep in mind as well: 1) A set-up is just a potential trade until/unless the buy or sell (trigger) criteria is met. Un-triggered set-ups are not moved to the completed trade category and are not counted as a failed or losing trade because they were never entered. 2) I do my best to make follow-up posts on active trades but with the sheer number of trade ideas posted here, it is nearly impossible to update them all. As far as stopped out (failed) trades go, I try to post suggested or ideal stop levels at the time of the initial post but as I always say, stop levels on the same trade will vary widely among different traders depending on their own personal trading style, risk tolerance, and even personal targets on the trade (if different from what I post). Therefore, although sometimes I will update a trade as being stopped as per my suggested criteria, I don’t always make follow-up posts to these trades. However, I will move them to the completed trades category where all posts associated with that particular trade will be archived indefinitely.