Sunday 23 September 2012

Week of 2012 SE 21

SPY fell by 1.1% this week, while my account fell 1.4%.  The loss-floor rose to -5.9%, beating its value as of May 18th and almost reaching the heights of March 16th.

[out]: Withdrew some more money from the account this week, to pay for life insurance.  It’s getting very pricey at my age, but I still have one remaining child who is a minor.

Friday’s allocations:
Daily % gain
size
owned
Max loss
Sym  Buy Fri Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Beg   End
 
IAU  AU14 +1.3  14  +1.2  14  +1.3  14  +1.3  14  +1.3  14  +1.3  14  -0.0 +0.0
PPLT  AU30 +0.8  7  +0.6  7  +0.4  7  +0.4  7  +0.4  7  +0.4  0  +0.4 +0.4
TNA  SE05 +2.3  
25
69
+1.8  
24
0
+1.8  24  +1.8  24  +1.8  0  +0.2 +0.2
SRTY ¹  SE18 -0.1  15  -0.1  15  -0.1  15  -0.1  15  -0.7 -0.7
SRTY ²  SE20 +0.0  15  -0.4  14  -0.4 -0.4
SPY +17.3     +16.9     +16.8     +16.9     +16.9     +16.2    
me -3.3 -4.1 -4.3 -4.3 -4.3 -4.7
floor -7.0 -5.5 -6.2 -5.6 -6.0 -5.9

Stock-trading robot

HostMDS.ca: This server has been shut down.  HostMDS dēleta est!

VPSville.ca: There was one quote-fetch failure this week: Friday at 4pm.  The robot gave up after only 20 seconds.  This may need further tweaking for reliability.

Ticker
Symbol
Buy dateBuy priceSell dateSell priceAcct Profit
ModelActualMAModelActual M  A  M  A 
TNA SE 05 12:00 $58.43 SE 17 15:00 SE 07 09:30 $65.99 $61.95 +1.7% +1.8%
SE 17 14:00 $65.99 $66.18
(Do not buy) SE 11 11:40 $63.41
SE 13 12:39 $64.05
SRTY ¹ (Do not buy) SE 18 15:00 $35.07 SE 19 10:00 $34.89 $34.86 +0.0% -0.1%
SRTY ² SE 20 11:00 $35.32 SE 21 09:30 $34.41 $34.35 -0.4%

TNA: I beat my own robot!  But just barely.  Would have been a +2.2% gain if I hadn’t sold those shares on SE 07 and then re-bought them on SE 11.  The impulse-purchase of more shares on SE 13 (in response to the announcement of QE3) turned out to be correct.
      The final sale was an hour earlier than expected due to an erroneous price quote.  The new VPSville robot is faster, but still gets occasional wrong answers when the market price is moving rapidly.  Still, the result was positive.

SRTY ¹: Erroneous trade due to a build-up of erroneous price quotes, which I took to be a “final fuck-you” from HostMDS on my way out the door.  I added a special rule to the robot so it would know that I had these shares and would look for an exit-time, which turned out to be the next morning.

SRTY ²: Normal trade.  Unfortunately, there was a gap-down and stop-out Friday morning.  Not sure why I didn’t get the opening price.

Precious metals trading

PPLT: Platinum fell on Tuesday as Japan shut down auto-production plants due to its argument with China over some uninhabited islands; striking South African platinum miners got a 22% wage-hike.  My 5½% trailing stop triggered and I got out of this trade with a profit.  Platinum might be on its way back up; should I buy it again?

IAU: This was a consolidation week, when the price of gold did not move much.  Still, it managed to make a marginal new high on Friday, pushing up my 10% trailing stop from “slightly below break-even” to “slightly above break-even”.

DGP: I don’t know what the market will do next.  It might be that we will have stagflation, where the price of equities stands still while the price of commodities rises.  If so, I should buy some more gold.  Maybe a 2× leveraged gold product like DGP?

Friday 14 September 2012

Week of 2012 SE 14

SPY rose by 2.3% this week, to a new all-time high!  My account rose 2.1%, to its highest value since April 5th.  The loss-floor is now -7.0%, same as July 13th.

US news: Bernanke has fired his last bullet!  QE3 is now officially on.  The financial beatings will continue indefinitely or until morale improves or until the US dollar is finally and completely destroyed.

Friday’s allocations:
Daily % gain
size
owned
Max loss
Sym  Buy Fri Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Beg   End
 
IAU  AU14 +1.0  14  +0.9  14  +1.0  14  +1.0  14  +1.3  14  +1.3  14  -0.3 -0.0
PPLT  AU30 +0.3  7  +0.3  7  +0.3  7  +0.5  7  +0.7  7  +0.8  7  -0.0 +0.4
TNA  SE05 +0.9  
15
33
+0.8  
16
33
+0.7  
21
50
+0.9  
11
50
+1.6  
24
69
+2.3  
25
69
+0.2 +0.2
SPY +15.0     +14.4     +14.7     +15.1     +16.8     +17.3    
me -5.4 -5.6 -5.5 -5.2 -4.1 -3.3
floor -7.7 -7.4 -7.6 -7.1 -7.1 -7.0

IAU, PPLT: Responded as expected to Thursday’s QE3 announcement.

TNA: Had sold ⅔ on Friday, which settled on Wednesday.  Bought back ⅓ on Tuesday, for a worse price (total of ⁴⁄₃ bought, ⅔ still owned, so 50% owned).  Bought more on Thursday in response to QE3 announcement (now 2.3 tranches bought, 1.6 tranches still owned, so 69%).  All this buying and selling used up the max-loss gains for the week, so the +0.2% figure did not change (but I now own a lot more stock with the same maximum loss as before).

Stock-trading robot

Ticker
Symbol
Buy dateBuy priceSell dateSell priceAcct Profit
ModelActualMAModelActual M  A  M  A 
TNA SE 05 12:00 $58.43 (Do not sell) SE 07 09:30 $61.95
(Not yet)
(Do not buy) SE 11 11:40 $63.41
SE 13 12:39 $64.05

TNA: Doing well!  If we get a downturn next week (as happened after QE2 was officially announced), the robot should get me out of this trade with a nice profit.

Robot infrastructure

VPSville.ca: New server is set up and fetching hourly quotes.  For this week, buy & sell orders were disabled on the new server, still running on the old server.

HostMDS.com: I plan to shut this down next week.

The chart at right shows seconds of quote-fetch time in blue and yellow.  There were seven fetches per day over five days.  Also shown are the number of erroneous prices corrected by the once-daily recheck.  The new server is much better!


Friday 7 September 2012

Week of 2012 SE 07

SPY rose by 2.5% this week, to a new all-time high!  My account beat SPY by rising 2.9% for the week, to its highest value since April 20th.  The loss-floor is now -7.7%, tieing its value for July 20th.

Euro news: The ECB’s plan to save Europe amounts to a copy of OpTwist: buy short-dated bonds and sell long-dated ones.  It remains unclear whether Germany will permit this; Austria and the Netherlands have already said “No more of our money to save Europe”.  The stock market jumped on the news, perhaps because of stealth money-printing by the authorities.

US news: Official unemployment fell by 0.2%, even though 100,000 fewer people had jobs, because more people gave up and stopped looking for work so they don’t “count” anymore.  Almost 26 million Americans are unemployed, underemployed, or despondent about employment.  The stock market jumped on the news, presumably because of stealth money-printing by the authorities.

US markets were closed on Monday for Labor Day.

Friday’s allocations:
Daily % gain
size
owned
Max loss
Sym  Buy Fri Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Beg   End
 
IAU  AU14 +0.7  14  +0.7  14  +0.7  14  +0.8  14  +1.0  14  -0.4 -0.3
URTY  AU23 +0.4  16  +0.9  16  +0.9  16  +1.8  17  +1.8  17  -0.3 -0.3
PPLT  AU30 +0.1  7  +0.2  7  +0.2  7  +0.3  7  +0.3  7  -0.3 -0.0
TNA  SE05 -0.1  15  +0.7  16  +0.9  
15
33
-1.0 +0.2
SPY +12.5         +12.4     +12.3     +14.6     +15.0    
me -8.3 -7.6 -7.7 -5.9 -5.4
floor -10.4 -10.2 -11.1 -9.1 -7.7

IAU, PPLT: Doing very well!  Unfortunately, this suggests that inflation is rampant and food prices will be rising.

TNA: Decided to sell ⅔ of this at Friday’s open, since there were some signs of an “exhaustion top”.  I haven’t done any partial sales since November 17th.  Unclear whether it was a good move this time.

Stock-trading robot

HostMDS.ca: No hiccups this week, but quote-timing remains highly variable.  This server needs replacement.

VPSville.ca: I have rented a server and am setting it up.  Initial impression: very fast!

Ticker
Symbol
Buy dateBuy priceSell dateSell priceAcct Profit
ModelActualMAModelActual M  A  M  A 
URTY AU 23 13:00 AU 23 13:01 $61.13 $61.07 SE 06 14:00 $68.91 +1.7% +1.8%
TNA SE 05 12:00 $58.43 (Not yet) SE 07 09:30 $61.95
(Not yet)

URTY: Another measly two-week trend.  Where’s my QE3 trade that goes on for months?

TNA: None of my current models contemplate partial sales, so I have to wing it when recording this override.