Sunday, March 25, 2007

Its 2 AM

Yep, its 2 am in the morning. I can hear the sound of a frog croaking in the distance... and now I feel the urge to write something.

Its been a good week - I think I made about $6000 share trading this week. Could have made more if only I had followed my rules - ie set realistic trading targets.

But when the market turns to my favor, I'm as giddy as a schoolgirl in Spring. Emotion rushes in like floodwater and bang goes my brain.

The funny thing was that I actually fell asleep when the Market roared upwards on Thursday. I don't know why but I just felt so comfortable and secure - my trading plan had worked- the stocks were climbing - and then all of a sudden I felt asleep.

I need Coffee Man.

On other notes, I picked up a Noritake Smithfield today from an eBay seller. See photos below.

Its more younger than the Arlene set that I usually collect, which dates to the 1950s, and it has a pumpkin style design which was favored in the 80s.

Nonetheless, its pretty and the color is still good. Best of all, it has NEVER been used, and came in the original boxes!!! I would have kept them, but the boxes stank and were badly eaten by bugs.

There was some brown stain on several of the pieces- most likely inflicted by damp conditions. Washing Liquid failed to get them off. However a good dose of "the old faithful" sodium bicarb helped to remove all of the brown stains. Never resort to chemicals or metal and abrasive cleaners!!

Finally, I can have my tea in a civilized manner! LOL.

2 comments:

Lucky Tan said...

Hi. $6K. Congrats!

I hope not to sound "too smart" about this whole thing . I just want to share some experience.

I made more than half a million last year from last year I posted some of long term stock purchases in my blog which is actually set up for other purpose to discuss politics (http://singaporemind.blogspot.com/2006/05/some-singaporeans-get-unlucky.html). But it is not because I'm smart. I happened to buy a number of stocks that appreciated spectacularly in the past 1 year. These 3 years have been quite extraordinary for stocks and we will see saner times ahead...maybe I'll lose some money. However, I have noticed many people going in to trade stocks like it is "easy money". Technical analysis courses advertised and options trading courses promoted to encourage people to give a try. People go in, it happened to be a bull market they make money and they get hooked on trading.
I've watch this many times and there are a number of "traders" sitting around me at the work place....there were also many "traders" in the last bull run in 2003....I've been through all the bull runs since 1980s.

This is what I observed over many bull markets:

Prices of stocks in the short term usually move in a random fashion except for short periods (of a few months/weeks) during a bull market when they move up continuously allowing short term trades to make money. After a while the market falls back to its usual unpredictable pattern. I've seen people go in make like $30K in a week, then lose $40K the next week and so on. The main problem is short term trades are generally unpredictable and these people are at the mercy of the markets and each other. The other thing is trading is addictive like gambling....after a while the people will stay in for the kicks, just like why people get addicted to slot machines. It is a matter of time before they hit a patch when they start losing and dig into a hole.

From my experience, I want to say the following and it its purely my opinion formed by a number of market studies and observing traders over the years:

1. Most traders lose money. How do I know this? I have a number of friends who work as remisiers and we meet up once in a while to chat. Most of the clients (if not all) who trade frequently lose money. They don't go and tell these clients to stop because they earn commissions the most from them. Even with online accounts, remisier who sign on clients still earn.

2. Most day traders lose money in USA. This is a study done by the SEC : http://www.sec.gov/investor/pubs/daytips.htm after complaints from parents about online trading firms promoting this form of trading.

3. Markets are random (unpredictable) in the short term. There are many studies that show that technical analysis does not work because of randomness in the markets.

It is up to you to decide how you want to invest your money. If you believe you have the skills and temperament also consider it be because of luck and temporal pattens in the market movements that will not last.

All the best.

Lucky Tan.

Yau said...

Hi there Lucky.

Well done, sir!! You did well!

You are right. Often the most important thing is timing. Get in a bull market and hold and you'll do well. If I plunked all my money in the blue chips (banks and property counters) last year July and just went super long I'd have walked away with a fortune too. But I was busy doing something else (courting a girl in Australia) and didn't do any investments last year.

At the moment the markets are volatile- and it can usually go either way. Technical analysis does help to forecast share price movement but its no crystal ball- again the 2% stop loss rule applies. And it often doesn't work with a lot of penny shares where market manipulation is rampant.

I do my best to limit my losses- due to the volatile market. I even curb my profits and have a profit stop rule - so once the shares hit a certain level - 5 - 10% in two days I sell.

Anyhow nice talking with you and thank you for your considerate reply.