Week of 2012 DE 28

SPY fell by 2.2% this week, while my account rose by 0.6% to end the year at -5.4% below baseline.  The loss-floor fell to -6.9% below baseline.  *Sigh* another loser year.  Still, the loss-floor is up from its low of -11.5% (double-bottom in June and August) and my account value was briefly as low as -9.2% during JN 24 to JN 26.  But at no time during the year was my account value *ever* above baseline!  I had hoped for better results from the second year of trading.

On Tuesday, markets were closed for Christmas.

End of year holdings: one tranche of gold, one of “equity bear”, and one of “equity bull”, so I’m effectively flat.

Friday’s allocations:

Daily % gain size │ Max loss Sym  Buy │  Fri  Mon  Tue  Wed  Thu  Fri │ Beg   End   IAU  AU14 │ +0.4  13  +0.4  13  +0.4  13  +0.5  13  +0.4  13  │ +0.1 +0.1 SRTY  DE21 │ -0.2  15  +0.1  15  +0.3  15  +0.3  15  +0.3  15  │ -0.4 -0.2 TZA  DE26 │ +0.1  15  +0.1  15  +0.4  15  │ -0.6 -0.6 URTY ¹  DE27 │ -0.1  15  -0.1  15  │ -0.1 -0.1 URTY ²  DE28 │ -0.1  15  │ -0.4 -0.4 SPY │ +13.8     +13.4         +12.9     +12.8     +11.6     │ me │ -6.0 -5.8 -5.4 -5.5 -5.4 │ floor │ -6.5 -6.5 -7.1 -7.0 -6.9 │

URTY ¹: Stopped out.  Stop price way too tight!

URTY ²: End-of-day price recheck said URTY shouldn’t have been sold, so bought it back (for a worse price).

Stock-trading robot

The new holiday-handling code worked correctly!  The robot correctly detected that the market was closed on Tuesday for Christmas and so it did not record garbage prices.

Ticker Symbol		Buy date			Buy price			Sell date			Sell price			Acct Profit
		Model	Actual		M	A		Model	Actual		M	A		M	A
SRTY		DE 21 11:00			$34.43			DE 28 11:00			$35.17			+0.3%
TZA		DE 26 11:00			$13.97	$13.98		(Not yet)
URTY ¹		DE 27 14:00			$66.53			(Do not sell)	DE 27 14:06			$66.14
URTY ²		DE 27 14:00	DE 28 10:15		$66.53	$67.59		(Not yet)

SRTY: Robot operated correctly, but profit was minimal.

TZA: There is something very screwy going on here.  Stockcharts.com shows the price as being quite far above the SMA(77) indicator, which should have blocked the purchase, but the robot’s calculated SMA(77) is quite different.

URTY: Stop price was way too tight and stopped out immediately.  Revised prices from end-of-day were slightly looser (due to change in the IWM/URTY conversion) and so stop-out “shouldn’t” have happened.  Friday’s stop-update failed because it tried to update URTY first, which had actually stopped out, and so updates for TZA and SRTY didn’t happen.
      There is something wrong with the Donchian channel.  The stop is supposed to be “low of last 11 days” but there was a lower price on DE 14, which somehow got lost after DE 21.  The previous low was NO 16, which had properly held down the robot’s calculated stop for 11 days (but there was no actual URTY holding at that time).