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 date			Buy price			Sell date			Sell price			Acct Profit
		Model	Actual		M	A		Model	Actual		M	A		M	A
TNA		SE 05 12:00			$58.43		⅔	SE 17 15:00	SE 07 09:30		$65.99	$61.95		+1.7%	+1.8%
							⅓		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?