From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lcrocker@mercury.colossus.net)
Date: Thu Dec 09 1999 - 13:49:34 MST
> As for trading, today was a rather flat day, actually NASDAQ was down
> about 35 as I type this, but my two buys for the day were MESG which
> went from 17 1/2 to 19 1/8. I purchased 2000 shares, held on for 3 hours
> or so and sold for a 3200 dollar or appr. 10% gain, the second was EGHT
> which I purchased at 4 3/4 and sold at 6. 10,000 shares translated to a
> 12,500 dollar increase, or about 25%.
> ...
> I have no year to date figure for daytrading as I just started about 3
> months ago. In that time period I have run my 50,000 dollar starting
> capital up to about 849,650 as of close of my trading today.
I don't doubt that your EV from these trades, and every trade you
make, is probably very high. But as a poker player I have to say that
regularly putting 5% of your bankroll on a single bet--even if every
bet has positive expectation--produces an uncomfotably high probability
of ruin. My poker expectation is about 2 bets per hour; but I have
upswings and downswings of 100 bets now and then. It's not uncommon
for pros to have bad _months_. Things generally level out at the
months-to-years level, but you better have the bankroll to outlast
those swings. I keep track of my play and can quote you both expectation
and variance (19!). Do you have similar stats for your trading?
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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