I tried to close my IAU position this morning but I keep getting a "More shares requested than in current position" message. I even tried reducing the order, setting a stop order, limit order.... no avail.
As much as this is frustrating I am not terribly concerned about it... yet. Gold jumped a bit between my attempt and now, almost $8, and the fund jumped from $13.71 to 13.79.... about 8 cents. Yes, there is a reasonably close correlation in short term moves on this one.
I would like to set a stop and just trail it manually, I'll have to wait for the broker to get back to me... or I can call the order desk if I feel a strong desire to have this dealt with quicker.
UPDATE:
I called the trade desk and had it pointed out to me that I had an outstanding stop order in place and therefore could not add another order on the same shares (DUHHH!). I have been trading with and without stops for a while no so I just forgot that I had one in place. Once I had placed a couple of failed attempts and had them rejected then looked at the order status I failed to notice the original order nested in the bottom. Classic newbie mistake.
Anyhow, the price climbed back up near it's high for the week at $13.85, I closed it out at $13.77 so I don't need to sit on it for the weekend. With the Middle East shenanigans it may very well gap one way or the other by Monday and I would rather not deal with that... so an overall 3.11% gain on a short term gold rally trade.
I look at the entry and exit based on the gold futures contracts and drool... a little. $6,000 in profits. Now I am not trading those so the point in moot but what is interesting is that there was a bit of a disconnect between the percentage increase between the ETF and the futures. Prior to this week they were tracking with the ETF a little ahead but this week the ETF has been a full 1% lagging. A shame as I was likely to be closing the trade this week it would have been nice to have been able to post an extra point on the return.
Jeff.
Questrade, My direct access discount broker.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Friday, February 18, 2011
Resisting the urge...
I keep having to pull myself back from overtrading. I have considered selling and buying this gold trade a few times and I may have come out ahead based on my timing BUT I am resisting and sticking to the plan.
Today I moved the stops up on my first trade and entered a second position, double basically, and set the same stop. This has me at breakeven for trade one and 33 cents down on trade two.
Today's entry was close to not getting filled due to the shallow pullback off the start, but I stuck to my entry price. Had I started earlier I would have got my price pre-market, just busy with other stuff.
I am starting to go over my previous trades, as I mentioned I was going to. It looks a little monotonous as I will have to print out and manually annotate my charts as there are no studies that cover what I am looking for. Most indicators are available (Aroon, On Balance Volume, moving averages and perhaps I'll use the Bollinger bands) but cross referencing time scale charts with non-time scale charts... either nobody does it or they have and not found it useful.
Actually, over the years I have found that all of the non-useful stuff is readily available and all the really good stuff is near to impossible to get without having to pay a fair price to get, so I am now wondering if what I am doing is just one of those things that may happen to work very well. If nothing else I can prove or disprove that theory this weekend. The trouble with any study is trying not to let the known future affect the trade ideas that are to be based on the past data.
Jeff.
Today I moved the stops up on my first trade and entered a second position, double basically, and set the same stop. This has me at breakeven for trade one and 33 cents down on trade two.
Today's entry was close to not getting filled due to the shallow pullback off the start, but I stuck to my entry price. Had I started earlier I would have got my price pre-market, just busy with other stuff.
I am starting to go over my previous trades, as I mentioned I was going to. It looks a little monotonous as I will have to print out and manually annotate my charts as there are no studies that cover what I am looking for. Most indicators are available (Aroon, On Balance Volume, moving averages and perhaps I'll use the Bollinger bands) but cross referencing time scale charts with non-time scale charts... either nobody does it or they have and not found it useful.
Actually, over the years I have found that all of the non-useful stuff is readily available and all the really good stuff is near to impossible to get without having to pay a fair price to get, so I am now wondering if what I am doing is just one of those things that may happen to work very well. If nothing else I can prove or disprove that theory this weekend. The trouble with any study is trying not to let the known future affect the trade ideas that are to be based on the past data.
Jeff.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Gold continued....
It's nice to be in a trade that is actually doing something.
EOD today has my gold trade up 1.82% as gold sits in the mid 1370's. Target is somewhere over 1400.
I have closed all of my other trades as of yesterday. While my win rate is just under 50% (too many shorts as the shorts did me in with this grinding rally overall) I have more data to play with while I wait for the setups to setup and trigger. I decided to apply an On Balance Volume (OBV) indicator to my trades to see how it reacts to the various price moves. I haven't been using volume as a factor in my trade decisions lately and I think that it may have been a factor that could have made me take, or close trades at a different point.
Sometimes simplifying things too much can be just that... simplified too much.
Jeff.
EOD today has my gold trade up 1.82% as gold sits in the mid 1370's. Target is somewhere over 1400.
I have closed all of my other trades as of yesterday. While my win rate is just under 50% (too many shorts as the shorts did me in with this grinding rally overall) I have more data to play with while I wait for the setups to setup and trigger. I decided to apply an On Balance Volume (OBV) indicator to my trades to see how it reacts to the various price moves. I haven't been using volume as a factor in my trade decisions lately and I think that it may have been a factor that could have made me take, or close trades at a different point.
Sometimes simplifying things too much can be just that... simplified too much.
Jeff.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Gold ETF and equivalency tracking.
One of the factors that affects how appropriate an ETF is to replace an underlying index is how well it tracks relative to the underlying index moves. Right now I am in a gold trade that I am using IAU as a proxy for gold futures contracts.
I have both the futures and the ETF prices tracking from my entry point as if I had bought both. So far my real position in IAU is beating the futures by a slim margin.
For example, last night's close for gold was 1362.7 and IAU was at $13.32. Now futures trade after hours so there is no continuous price changes to compare so EOD is as of 1600h yesterday. The increase from the position opening is 0.87% for gold (11.7 points) and 0.98% for IAU (13 cents per share).
While this is worth noting the real difference is mostly negligible as futures contracts can vary based on factors other than just the traded price for gold. If the contracts are skewed high due to demand or expectations then later on the futures increase in value may be less than the corresponding ETF as this initial disparity shrinks.
Basically, if the tracking is this close I consider it acceptable to base the gold trades off of the futures contracts for triggers at entry and exit. The only exception might be that virtually closing the futures trade due to proximity to the expiration date may not apply to the ETF trade. It depends on the trend.
Jeff.
I have both the futures and the ETF prices tracking from my entry point as if I had bought both. So far my real position in IAU is beating the futures by a slim margin.
For example, last night's close for gold was 1362.7 and IAU was at $13.32. Now futures trade after hours so there is no continuous price changes to compare so EOD is as of 1600h yesterday. The increase from the position opening is 0.87% for gold (11.7 points) and 0.98% for IAU (13 cents per share).
While this is worth noting the real difference is mostly negligible as futures contracts can vary based on factors other than just the traded price for gold. If the contracts are skewed high due to demand or expectations then later on the futures increase in value may be less than the corresponding ETF as this initial disparity shrinks.
Basically, if the tracking is this close I consider it acceptable to base the gold trades off of the futures contracts for triggers at entry and exit. The only exception might be that virtually closing the futures trade due to proximity to the expiration date may not apply to the ETF trade. It depends on the trend.
Jeff.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Gold proxy
I was away from my computer for the entire trading day and of course gold did the move that was to have been the setup to get into the trade. As a result I took the trade smaller than planned a little past the entry.
I used IAU as a proxy for gold futures or CFDs. It is cheap, under $15, so I can buy enough to let me feel comfortable with the smaller break-even move.
I did have trouble figuring out the correlation to the pricec of gold and decide to let the relative price action dictate the final entry. I may take an additional position tomorrow if there is a small pullback.
Off to bed for now, it's been a long day.
Jeff
I used IAU as a proxy for gold futures or CFDs. It is cheap, under $15, so I can buy enough to let me feel comfortable with the smaller break-even move.
I did have trouble figuring out the correlation to the pricec of gold and decide to let the relative price action dictate the final entry. I may take an additional position tomorrow if there is a small pullback.
Off to bed for now, it's been a long day.
Jeff
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
ERTS Addendum
I look at the closing numbers today and see that ERTS closed almost $1 higher than my exit, $18.12.
It looks like a breakout move that some may try to get in on to ride a momentum gain.
Volume was a huge 38million shares.
It may hold, this is one reason why I tossed around the idea of staging in and out of trades, to let something like this run. I did decide against it for now in favour of the surer bet of getting out at target profits though. Too much gaming involved for me right now as I am still keeping a lower trading profile.
It's time I go over my charts again and see what is in position to get back into.
Jeff.
It looks like a breakout move that some may try to get in on to ride a momentum gain.
Volume was a huge 38million shares.
It may hold, this is one reason why I tossed around the idea of staging in and out of trades, to let something like this run. I did decide against it for now in favour of the surer bet of getting out at target profits though. Too much gaming involved for me right now as I am still keeping a lower trading profile.
It's time I go over my charts again and see what is in position to get back into.
Jeff.
DRAT! Electronic Arts (ERTS) jumped today.
That isn't the problem... actually there is no real problem here.
I had a position in ERTS, long, and I have gotten rather lax in checking the pre-market activity on my longer term holdings. I set a target exit and just let it ride.
Upon checking into my portfolio (I keep a tracking portfolio on a free charting site for quick reference as I don't need to log in to look at it) I noted that ERTS had a 15% jump.
DRAT!
I had a much lower target set and, had I been checking the pre-market, I most likely would have either raised my target or cancelled my order and set a VTSO after the open. I did get 15 cents over my target in both entries at least ($1.67 and $1.15)
Based on my entries I saw 5.8% and 8.5% returns... but I have held these since October last year. Compared to my 10 day, 2.5% trade in gold last week that's poor. But, a planned gain is a planned gain.
I am still waiting a setup to go long on a gold trade using IAU as a low priced proxy for gold. It doesn't track as well as I would like but overall I am expecting the trade to span at least a week, so a little off should be no big deal. This is actually a breakout move to the upside and I am using a stop limit entry to buy. Due to the tracking error I need to monitor the entry and probably manually enter it. Although if the price of gold gets close enough to the target entry I can estimate the correlated IAU price pretty close and enter an order at that point.
The variance is just not working out to be able to set this one on autopilot.
Jeff.
I had a position in ERTS, long, and I have gotten rather lax in checking the pre-market activity on my longer term holdings. I set a target exit and just let it ride.
Upon checking into my portfolio (I keep a tracking portfolio on a free charting site for quick reference as I don't need to log in to look at it) I noted that ERTS had a 15% jump.
DRAT!
I had a much lower target set and, had I been checking the pre-market, I most likely would have either raised my target or cancelled my order and set a VTSO after the open. I did get 15 cents over my target in both entries at least ($1.67 and $1.15)
Based on my entries I saw 5.8% and 8.5% returns... but I have held these since October last year. Compared to my 10 day, 2.5% trade in gold last week that's poor. But, a planned gain is a planned gain.
I am still waiting a setup to go long on a gold trade using IAU as a low priced proxy for gold. It doesn't track as well as I would like but overall I am expecting the trade to span at least a week, so a little off should be no big deal. This is actually a breakout move to the upside and I am using a stop limit entry to buy. Due to the tracking error I need to monitor the entry and probably manually enter it. Although if the price of gold gets close enough to the target entry I can estimate the correlated IAU price pretty close and enter an order at that point.
The variance is just not working out to be able to set this one on autopilot.
Jeff.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
