# The guru of timing...



## GreatPig (13 October 2005)

Don't ya just love it. You do a bit of profit taking (or even loss taking) in the face of the big down days, only to find... 

So much for sticking to a plan.

Cheers,
GP


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## sam76 (13 October 2005)

I feel for you there, Great Pig.

I really do..


Sam


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## Julia (13 October 2005)

GP

Many commiserations.  Good on yer for posting the results with a quasi humorous comment.  Hope it turns round for you quickly.

Cheers
Julia


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## It's Snake Pliskin (13 October 2005)

GreatPig said:
			
		

> Don't ya just love it. You do a bit of profit taking (or even loss taking) in the face of the big down days, only to find...
> 
> So much for sticking to a plan.
> 
> ...




Yes, good honest reporting there Greatpig. I would like to see more posters post results. I think we can all learn from other people.

Maybe you need to address your selling strategy. Setting your stop outside of the noise, to quote Van Tharp, could help. 

Good stuff.  
Snake


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## RichKid (13 October 2005)

Hi GP,
If it helps I got stopped out of my positions last week too, profits became losses, just bad timing to see it all fall like that. We'll get shaken out of a few from time to time. If you review your plan and find it's all okay then soldier on I guess. Even in hindsight you'd have HAD TO exit some of those stocks, it's just plain silly being in once established support is broken, you can always buy in later- unless your plan is different (eg some people won't exit until two days after a trend break). Of course just seeing an exit itself isn't enough to see the big picture but at first glance looks like you had quite a few going the wrong way at once. Hope things improve with the next lot.


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## GreatPig (14 October 2005)

Thanks, folks.

I should point out of course that those are only a few of the total number of shares I was holding, and still hold in some cases. Others I sold have kept falling since. And some of those were also sold at a profit, just not the same profit as I would now be holding if I'd kept them!

I do have a strategy for selling, but as I was holding a fairly large number of stocks which take some time to work through when they're all falling, not to mention the trading Website running slow on those days, I wanted to divest myself of quite a few of them given I think there could still be a few more significant down days coming up. Consequently I sold a number which were showing signs of weakness, but not actually at my stop levels, because I was concerned that another big down day might push many significantly below the stops before I could get around to selling them. Some were cheap ones that have a tendency to fall between 5% and 10% on days when the market only falls 2%. That's why some of the ones I posted might not look like I sold at a reasonable stop level.

I should also note that these were nearly all trading stocks. I only sold 3 or 4 of my investment stocks, keeping most of them. In fact, I added to my positions on a couple of those stocks the other day - wisely or not remains to be seen.

By my chart, those two main down days dropped the XAO from its previous level to about half way down to the longer-term trend line - a previous support level. For the last few days it's been building a small ledge there, and I think there's a fair chance that it could soon drop off again down to the trend line (it may not, but the chances are enough to make me want to take precautionary action).

Naturally, I can't get it right in every case, and as those charts show, I've sometimes sold prematurely.

Still, missed profit is easier to take than a large loss 

Cheers,
GP


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## Happy (14 October 2005)

Just noticed, that if you used Count Back Line (Daryl Guppy's) as Stop Loss or Protect Profit exits, you would be stil in all posted trades.

Now we have volatile period and it is quite easy to become complacent only to incur big losses, but looks that your exit seems to have strangled the above-posted trades.


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## GreatPig (18 October 2005)

Another one for the collection...

Cheers,
GP


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## happytrader (19 October 2005)

Hello GreatPig

Thank you for sharing your results. Very much appreciated. Two of the most 'profitable right from the start' (and continue to be) buyers of options I know, say and do the same thing. "As soon as it goes the wrong way get out"
Since you have the same attitude and discipline, your eventual success is assured.

Cheers
Happytrader


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## GreatPig (19 October 2005)

Thanks, Happy,

That last one is perhaps a little deceptive, in that at the time I sold, my trend line was higher up, across the dip in the middle, so price action was significantly southeast of the trend line at that point.

GP


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## GreatPig (14 December 2005)

The saga continues. I'm gonna shoot that guy with the crystal ball...

Cheers,
GP


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## GreatPig (14 December 2005)

And one more.

I've been trying to run fairly tight stops recently, but as can be seen in the Caltex case, even if I widen them, the price just keeps on dropping until I sell, and then straight back up...

Cheers,
GP


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## clowboy (14 December 2005)

Greatpig,

Thanx for posting the charts - great to learn from.

Would be great if a rough entry was also included.

Are they mostly still profiatble trades that you exited to early or did you make a loss on them?


thanks


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## GreatPig (15 December 2005)

Clowboy,



			
				clowboy said:
			
		

> Are they mostly still profiatble trades that you exited to early or did you make a loss on them?



Entries:

ADB - 8/11 @ $12.64 (sell mostly @ $12.66)
BSG - 10/11 @ $1.00 (sell mostly @ $0.945)
COH - 8/11 @ $38.50 (sell @ $39.34)
CTX - 1/8 @ $17.36 (sell @ $18.98)
HST - 4/11 @ $1.94 (sell @ $1.93)
MRL - 14/11 @$1.075 (sell @ $1.10)

So BSG was a moderate loss and HST a very small loss, but the others were all profit, although a very small profit in the case of ADB and a smallish one for MRL. CTX was a reasonably decent profit due to the length of time I'd had it, and COH a moderate profit due to the relatively large position size I used.

Cheers,
GP


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## WaySolid (15 December 2005)

Here is my worst trade of the year. I made good money in JBM on the way up the chart, bought the dip which was OK in itself. What made this trade so bad is that I moved my stop to give the trade room after a few days weak price action.

Total results was a -2.42R trade.

Lessons learnt.

1) Risk should not be adjusted on the run
2) There is a price to pay trading the smaller cap stocks, note the gaps. I really like the ASX50 now.


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## happytrader (15 December 2005)

Hi Waysolid

You did rather well I thought. Just looking at JBM on quarterly charts. What  a great run up for 3 quarters of the year. I notice that the last of those quarters ended in a gravestone doji. On a shorter timeframe, the monthly chart of August ended in a gravestone doji. Getting it down to weekly charts, the second week of August ended in dark cloud cover. If that was the worst you did it was still great.

Cheers
Happytrader.


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## happytrader (15 December 2005)

GreatPig said:
			
		

> Clowboy,
> 
> 
> Entries:
> ...




Hi GP

Those are very good figures whichever way you look at it. Great discipline and consistency overall I thought.  Well done.

Cheers
Happytrader


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## tech/a (15 December 2005)

GP.

Some constructive observation.

I notice something with 80% of your charts and something else with around 60%.

The 60% observation in most of the early charts posted is double bottoms and in some cases Tweezer bottoms(a buy signal).
The 80% obsevation is that you sell AFTER a bottom has been made and you sell without waiting for it to be taken out.

With a medium term timeframe it becomes a common occurence that we need to trade through corrections.
So we need to know or have an idea where we are in the scale of the move we are trading.
It maybe worth investigating Elliot Waves as a guide to "Where" your trade is rather than a buy sell tool.

Of all the "Structure" Type analysis tools I find this and Steidelmayer the most consistant.

Simply corrective moves are normally 3 waves ABC severe corrcetions can be 5 waves.Getting out at the high area of wave b in a correction would be the ideal.
On the "Where am I in this move" scenario all moves forward are made up of 5 waves and in each 5 wave move a bigger 5 waves IE a larger 1 wave will be made up of 5 waves.

Radge explains HIS use of Elliot very well but the point I'm making is not about Radge or his use of Elliot its about analysis that can help your numbers.

Just a few ideas.


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## Happy (15 December 2005)

Great,
Another thought:

You don’t seem to ever follow up your exited stock. Why?

We can be wrong getting in; Stop takes care of that

We can be wrong getting out; Re-entry takes care of that


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## GreatPig (15 December 2005)

Thanks Happy & Tech/a.



			
				tech/a said:
			
		

> The 80% obsevation is that you sell AFTER a bottom has been made and you sell without waiting for it to be taken out.



Not sure what you mean by this. In those last charts I posted, with the possible exception of ADB, none of them had a visible bottom at the time I sold.



> It maybe worth investigating Elliot Waves as a guide to "Where" your trade is rather than a buy sell tool.



I just received Nick's book a couple of days ago and have read about 1/3 of it so far, which includes the basic intro to Elliot Waves. I plan to study it more as I get time.

Now, one last chart which is perhaps the most perfect example of this syndrome (as I like to think of it ). With SEN, I bought as it appeared to be taking off again, although was somewhat concerned about it having had a few days of decent gains already. As can be seen on the chart, my buy was almost at the peak of that run up. As it started to fall, considering all the earlier cases of selling just before they turned back up plus the fact it was subject to fairly large movements anyway, I allowed it more room than I normally would to correct without selling. Eventually though, I had built up quite a large loss on it and decided I just had to sell - which of course turned out to be the bottom day  (current price is 77 cents).

One thing I see now, that I didn't notice then, was that the very bottom turned out to be at the same price as the earlier peak on 18/11, so I perhaps should have allowed that as the stop level. However, if it had continued to fall through that level, my loss would have been very large, relative to my normal limit, and I was already concerned about the size of the loss at that point.

Maybe this one was just bad luck, maybe I shouldn't have bought after those few days of decent gains (but then it could have just been the start of a huge run up), or maybe I should have cut it off earlier, but that's for later analysis.

After trades like this one though, I'm starting to think those people who say you can't pick bottoms don't know what they're talking about: I seem to be able to pick them with alarming regularity (as sell points though, not buy points!) 

Cheers,
GP


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## GreatPig (15 December 2005)

Happy said:
			
		

> You don’t seem to ever follow up your exited stock. Why?



Some of them I have bought again later, but usually not straight away as I've typically already used the funds for another purchase by then.

Cheers,
GP


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## Happy (15 December 2005)

Great,
Well, one of the little things to think about would be to have some funds stashed away for ‘Great buys’.

I also try to determine ‘maximum chase entry’; Guppy’s got it about as high again as the difference between initial stop and entry.

My initial entry would be $0.68 or $0.69 – just above small red candle above trendline
Stop would be $0.61 (just below last red candle crossed by trendline) 
Making maximum chase entry $0.69 + $0.08 = $0.77

But my stop would still be $0.61 as the rest is breathing space until the day when you sold.
After that day my stop would go up to $0.67

And you guest it, retrospective talk is easy.


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