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Questrade Democratic Pricing - 1 cent per share, $4.95 min / $9.95 max

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Stock trade DE, loss taking and profit making

Seeing as I posted a last winning trade for CVA I figure it only fair to post one that had a losing trade as the last trade... or two.

DE, Deere & Co.

The last trade closed on September 17, 2010 for a $3.00 loss, it was a short sell.
The next to last trade closed on Jul 23, 2010 also for a $3.00 loss and also a short sell.

In both of these cases I may not have taken the trades due to the established up trend but, in the interest of consistency I logged them according to the rules rather than muddying the plan. To be honest I have been considering dropping any shorts against the trends but even some of those have been very good trades. I mitigate the risk by only entering one position and I raise the entry by a dollar at least. This also raises the target considering that the following drop may not be quite as far.

STATS for DE:

24 first entry trades, 17 winners
5 second entry trades, 4 winners
1 third entry trade, 1 winner

$41.00 per share gains (using 100 share trades that is $4,100 for the period from June1, 2009)
Total days in any trade 169 of 483 possible.

I ran the trades at $1,000 per trade initially and rolled the profits right back into the next trade to provide compounding returns. Allowing for the commission structure at Questrade of $4.95 per trade (I just rounded up to $5 for ease of math) the $1,000 would now be $1,717

That is a 71.7% net profit. Like CVA, while consistent, it is well below the average.

Having said that, had I just bought and held the stock on June 1, 2009 at the average daily price of $44.65 it would be at $71.49 now. The gain of $26.84 represents an 60.0% profit. Also, this drive to higher prices is what lead to more losers... 6 of the 7 losing trades were shorts, and one break even of a total of 30 trades. That is still a 73.3% win average even at that.

It is worth noting that I have one stock with a win rate as low as 64% and the ROI is still 35%. I think that is respectable.

Jeff.

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