October a bust...not really for me.

Well,

This last month just did not work out for me. Conference, busy business schedule, platform issues and technology problems kept me away from almost all trading activity since my last posting. I think that I may have traded two or three days, a bust over all as that does not produce any measureable results....although I did have 58 trades I cannot really recall what transpired. I obviously didn't make or lose much or I am sure that I would have remembered, terrible but I am not going to even look at my spreadsheet now, looking forward only.


So, I know I said that October was going to ne THE month to really get this going...I guess I was wrong, although it was, I couldn't take advantage of any of it. So, I am aiming foor some activity in November, if life and factors don't get in the way again. My technology issues may still exist so I will have to work around them and that may be problematic.

Interesting note about the blog. I am getting a lot of hits on searches about Questrade and VTSO...so I assume there is something going on with this. Perhaps VTSO is not working yet. I know they shut down that option a while ago when they converted to a newer version of QTP and QTE, (the trading platforms). I would have assumed that they had straightened that issue out by now, perhaps not. I have stopped using them anyway as they tend to get me kicked out of trades too soon. Better to set manual stops and progress them as you see fit. VTSO was an interesting experiment for me but proved that it did not work as well as I anticipated it might to allow worry free longer term trading. With the current volatility it is a good thing to not be working if that is the case, chances of getting stopped for some serious losses are quite high, even with regular stops. In daytrading there really is not much place for VTSO's anyway. Long afternoon unmanned runs would be nice but not really the ideal. I have seen a few days where I might have done that as a test.

So. Given that the market has changed so much since my last forays this should be an interesting time to restart my DTing plan. The price of AEM the last time I checked was down well under $50 as the price of gold is depressed now also. Everything is down but I do expect gold to be amoungst the first commodities, and gold related stocks to be amoungst the first stocks, to rebound following this severe correction. I know that a lot of people expected gold to keep increasing as people rushed to it as a hedge against the financial crisis, and they should have been correct, I even expected it but wold not put long term money on it...I didn't trust it anymore than anything else at the time. Goes to show that nothing is a sure thing.

I also think that there are quite a few investors out there wishing right now that they had set stop prices to exit at some respectable point. I know my plan would have had me out had I been playing long term stuff. Better to have to pay some taxes on profits than to get to claim losses should you bail at this time. Having said that I also think that some of this, financial aside, is exasperated by some of the automatic selling.

I notice that online brokers are claiming 80+ % increases in new client signups. I think that a lot of novice investors are getting ready to try to take advantage of low prices...I hope they are quite prepared to lose every cent and then some to the pros who are plying these waters. Price volatility works in their favour as they can knock out stops and control the price enough to play the greed and fear of the average trader. I have seen days in AEM that have shown 5 times the average daily price swing...that is $10 over a normal $2 daily swing. Nice if you are right, but I watched some of these unfold and they were not as predictable as some may have expected. Even so I would loved to have been there with some cash to try my hand at it. With a consistant plan there was a ton of dough to be made.

To those buy and holders all I can say is "RIDE 'EM COWBOY....YEEEEHAAAAAAWWWW!"

Jeff.