Monday update, Agnico-Eagle Mines

This morning was pretty good, had to really work for it....had to trade right through to 1130h and four full trades.

Net $73
return 1.46%

I added a few calculations to my spreadsheet to give me some better performance indicators and they are, for the first 10 trading days for me (I ended up including last Friday even though I kind of have a no trading Friday rule), as follows:

Gross profit = $1243.00
Net profit = $953.00
Net return = 19.06%
Daily net profit average = $95.30
Daily return average = 1.9%
Trades total = 29
Average profit per trade = $32.86
Average return per trade = 0.66%
Average number of trades per day = 2.9

Totals for the first 10 trading days for me (missed one day in the first week...Friday)

I also added the S&P TSX Capped Gold index as a reference indicator. I was using the TSX but the AEM price follows the gold musch closer...so I will leave both up. Charts monitoring right now are the AEM 1 minute and 3 minute, TSX and Capped Gold 1 minutes. The level one and market depth for AEM. This is easy to do...I have room to add one more chart but I cannot add another quote box without making things too small so I will work that out once I get real comfortable with the one stock.

So the setups were decent but the movements were not large.

Pivot Points as follows:

R2=$60.95 R1= $59.74 PP= $58.68 S1=%7.47 S2=$56.41

The PP for the day was the first price to watch as the price opened at $59.02. The price dropped to a low of $58.70...almost exactly on cue for the PP then rallied right up to R1 and hovered for almost 10 minutes. I waited 28 minutes to trade as the R1 was broken and all my indicators looked good for a long position with a possible target of R2...about $1 away. It made it to $60.55 before the volume dropped off and my indicators weakened. I exited at $60.19 during the second minute of the dropping price. It rallied a bit after but only for a minute or so, nothing convincing.

Hindsight would have me follow my altered rule (see next post) and enter long as the price bounced off of the PP after seeing some indication of a continued rally, this in the first few minutes. All the indications were for this rally to run but I held fast, or pretty close, to my 30 minute rule. Otherwise I might have jumped in at one of the three long entry points at 6 mins, 9 mins or 18mins (my actual entry). The ideal were the first and last as they were the farthest from any line of resistance and on top of support while the second was at the midpoint...not as strong a trade.

Second trade I jumped the gun a bit as I did not wait for the price to convincingly cross below the R1 to short ($59.68) but it turned out OK as I rode through the rally (potential loss was never larger than $20) and made it to $58.94.

Trade three I misread as the price approached the PP again I went short as I should have waited it out a little longer for a higher probabilty long trade...lost a couple of dollars there...$27 net.

Trade four was a squeaker as I entered short at $59.40 at 1057h right after a brief consolidation with a slight downtrend, the highest trading afterward was $59.48 but the consolidation was not quite done. I kept plotting the downtrend line and seeing it continue so I stayed in...the longer a consolidation continues the less likely it will do what I might expect...or at least the odds approach 50% so as long as the price keeps doing what I expect...heading down, albeit slowly, I stayed firm. I exited after a nice pullback to a low of $59.04 at $59.13 for a net $17 gain, not much but it did eventually give me a profit move. This trade turned into a "get a good exit" trade rather than a real winner.

As I write this the price is sloshing about within a 50cent range on lowish volume so I don't expect any great things this afternoon.

Keeping in mind that this is as close to trading as I can get without actually hitting the buy/sell button and using the worst trade entry at the given spread when I decide to enter and exit the trade. I am looking forward to trading and posting these or similar figures for real next week. Today was a bit of a test to see if trading on the Pro vs Elite software package would make any appreciable difference...I didn't see any. The look was a bit different but the numbers are all mostly there, the execution for a single stock will be clean. When I step up to two or more I will need to upgrade...if I feel the need to trade simultaneous stocks...I don't know that I will need to though.

JD.