The fake trade...dollars and cents

I managed to keep my money in my pocket this morning and do some live fake trading.

In order to make things more interesting, seeing as I had no money on the line I traded three stocks simultaneously...that was interesting.

My hit list consists of four stocks selected from my short list of 10, which I posted in The Turnaround a few days ago and I just reposted to keep it separate on The Short List

My hit list had AEM, CNQ, MG/A and SU.

As a result of today's activity I dropped MG/A from my hit list and added CM. I like the trending pattern of CM (CIBC) and didn't like the choppy action of the MG/A and found that it didn't really track well with the TSX...one of my indicators I use for deciding when to exit a trade. CM, doesn't follow the TSX well either but it is more consistant.

My CM fake trade was entered at about 1015h for $59.60. I would have placed a VTSO of about 30 cents at 1100h to let it go on autopilot and checked in at 1200h I would either place a 50 cent VTSO or just sell for $60.80 for a $110 profit (only 100 shares traded).

Considering that I missed the nice initial moves due to reluctance to enter the trades until I got more familiar with the price movement and indicators along with the three stock monitoring I don't think I did too bad. That and I was fighting the urge to put money down...I had to close the order box in case I got twitchy. $127 net commissions with six trades...add the CM trade bumps it to $227 net.

AEM for $16 net
CNQ for $77 net
SU for $34 net
CM for $100 net

Goal number one is to not lose money. I only had one actual losing trade for SU. The others were just not moving that much at the time. Maximun was three trades per stock.

I was done trading at 1100h except for the CM VTSO...which does not need me to monitor it.

Checking the previous moves before I started tracking trades there was another $350 net fudging against me already or even $175 if you cut that one in half again. 10 additional trades. Had I been using my money there might have been 3 or 4 trades that I would not have entered and those were the $10-$30 trades...bad entry but no loss accrued.

For sake of argument let's take the two worst stocks today, AEM and SU...$50 net gain, add the average of the previous possible trades...at the worst case $43.75 ($175/4) and the total is $93.75.

Based on my $5K capital (which is not that high anymore due to my playing) I would have seen a 1% - 1.9% portfolio gain for the one day gain. Translated into simple annualized returns that grows my portfolio to over $10K in one year assuming that the 1% return is the average daily return and assuming that I do not use any of the growing capital to trade larger lots or higher priced stocks for larger moves.

So much for the "would have"s. I will fake it again tomorrow and perhaps go real on Monday and see what happens.

JD.