Week of 2012 NO 09

SPY fell by 2.7% this week, erasing the last 15 weeks of gains.  My account rose 0.4% and has been hovering in the same area for the last 10 weeks. The loss-floor fell to -7.6%.

Friday’s allocations:

Daily % gain size │ Max loss Sym  Buy │  Fri  Mon  Tue  Wed  Thu  Fri │ Beg   End   IAU  AU14 │ +0.6  14  +0.6  14  +0.9  14  +0.9  14  +1.0  14  +1.0  14  │ +0.1 +0.1 SRTY ¹  NO05 │ -0.3  15  -0.3  15  -0.3  15  -0.3  0  │ -1.0 -1.0 SRTY ²  NO07 │ -0.1  15  +0.5  15  +0.3  15  │ -1.2 -0.7 UGLD  NO09 │ -0.0  15  │ -1.3 -1.3 SPY │ +12.8     +13.0     +13.9     +11.3     +10.0     +10.1     │ me │ -6.0 -6.2 -6.0 -6.1 -5.4 -5.6 │ floor │ -6.4 -6.7 -6.7 -7.9 -7.9 -7.6 │

Summary of action: There were two short-equity trades this week — a gain and a loss that cancelled each other out.  Meanwhile, gold’s price rose.

Stock-trading robot

Ticker Symbol		Buy date			Buy price			Sell date			Sell price			Acct Profit
		Model	Actual		M	A		Model	Actual		M	A		M	A
SRTY ¹		NO 05 10:00			$39.93	$39.92		NO 05 11:00			$39.10			-0.3%
SRTY ²		NO 07 12:00			$41.10			NO 09 11:00			$42.20			+0.371%	+0.349%

SRTY ²: Model and actual profits differ by only 0.022%, but this was enough to create a round-off error (model 0.4%, actual 0.3%).

Gold trading

Gold rose this week.  Daily MACD finally turned positive, so I scaled in with UGLD, which is a triple-leveraged “side-bet with the banksters” that the price of gold will continue to go up.  My account is now 60% long gold, which feels rather overexposed — but gold’s price moves very slowly.  Basic plan is to hold UGLD until daily MACD goes negative.

Original plan was to use a 17% trailing stop for UGLD, but I didn’t like how much that cost so I convinced myself that 9% should be enough for a short swing.  We shall see.  I have no model for this trade, so it feels “naked”.

Seasonal Trading Strategy

I’ve been waiting to try out Sy Harding’s seasonal trading strategy, but I haven’t yet put on a position for the winter and Sy hasn’t either.  In this post he is quite clear about what his strategy is: buy an equity index fund when daily MACD(12,26,9) goes positive after October 16th.  It seems that Sy buys the Dow Jones Industrials for the winter, but I was thinking of buying small-caps like I always do (perhaps SCHA, which has no trading fees for Schwab customers).

Week of 2012 NO 02

SPY rose by 0.2% this week and has returned to its value as of August 24th.  My account fell 0.4% and is still above its value from August 24th. The loss-floor rose to -6.4%.

US markets: Hurricane Sandy forced the evacuation of Wall St., so markets were closed on Monday and Tuesday.

Friday’s allocations:

Daily % gain size │ Max loss Sym  Buy │  Fri  Mon  Tue  Wed  Thu  Fri │ Beg   End   IAU  AU14 │ +0.8  14  +0.9  14  +0.8  14  +0.6  14  │ +0.1 +0.1 SRTY  OC26 │ -0.2  15  -0.3  15  -0.3  15  -0.3  15  │ -0.8 -0.8 SPY │ +12.6             +12.6     +13.8     +12.8     │ me │ -5.6 -5.6 -5.7 -6.0 │ floor │ -6.8 -6.4 -6.4 -6.4 │

IAU: Gold fell yet again this week.  Daily MACD is still roughly unchanged from a week ago.

SRTY: Yet another loss.  This week is the first time in a month when the robot didn’t buy SRTY on Friday afternoon — because the slower of the hourly MACD’s didn’t go negative until the close.

Stock-trading robot

Ticker Symbol		Buy date			Buy price			Sell date			Sell price			Acct Profit
		Model	Actual		M	A		Model	Actual		M	A		M	A
SRTY		OC 26 13:00			$40.74			OC 31 10:00			$39.85	$39.83		-0.3%

The robot did not properly detect that the market was closed on Monday and Tuesday.  When I first wrote the robot, Schwab was resetting their daily volume to zero when the market was closed, but now they’re leaving the previous day’s final volume up.  The robot is currently collecting volume at 4:00pm, but volume continues to change until after 4:05 or so.  I should move the final volume-check to 4:20 so it happens at the same time as the barchart.com recheck of prices, then treat the market as “closed” if volume is either zero or unchanged from yesterday.