Monthly Review: March 2015

Intraday Trading: -$3423.

Swing Trading: -$1034.

Back Account: +$2943.

ASX Stocks: +US$6533.

FX Trading: +$620.

Importance of being multi-market, multi-product illustrated again. I avoided stretching myself to a certain extent this month to focus on day to day consistency but it is reasonably clear that big opportunities should be taken advantage of. Accordingly I need to keep a closer eye on ASX stocks, and on fx.
The funny thing is that I completely missed the big opportunity in the euro squeeze and lost money trading the euro, and that was where the opportunity was this month in fx.
Due to the clear importance of including some overview of multi-markets I will work on my fx greybox strategy to ensure that it generates less signals, higher probability signals in order to minimise the stress and reduction of concentration on intraday trading it creates.

Intraday Trading: Day to day volatility was still far too high. Additionally I never had a consistent run, still just trying to hit too many home runs and feeling too good about having a single up day. I still think this poor performance is mostly psychological related; either impatience or lack of controlling risk.
This month I did improve on my level of overtrading, however, as analysis of my back account shows I still need more conviction in each trade idea.

Swing Trading: Was part of three nasty squeezes (AXN, ADXS, and CRMD) on some of my swing shorts of trash which cost me dearly (more than it should have). but to some extent obviously beyond my control, but execution just could have been better. As a result I will go through and identify my specific methodology for consistency. To sum up, a lack of management really caused under-performance.
The other thing that I really need to do, because I keep looking at these in hindsight and getting annoyed is capturing dead cat bounces long (as a swing). I was long ADXS from 7ish (Jan), and GENE from sub $4 yet still lost money capturing them long. So that can go on the to do list for making an exact methodology for consistency in capturing them.

Back Account: Clearly I'm very very happy I opened a back account. Predominantly I only traded in my back account when IB didn't have shares, but this also meant that I was only trading higher conviction ideas (because to bother going to back account meant it was worth the trouble).
The consistency of my trading in this account (like 8/10 trades profitable) yields interesting lessons for normal intraday trading.. Basically I need to be trading with a higher level of conviction.

ASX Stocks: Very simply just continue to look for the hot ipos that are liquid.