Week of 2013 AL 05

IWM fell by 3.3% this week, while my account rose by 1.8%.  The loss-floor is now -2.5%.

US news: Friday’s nonfarm payroll report was horrible: 88k new jobs last month, only half of what had been expected.  It is reasonable to expect (but not guaranteed) that the market will fall for the next three days.

End of week allocations:

Daily % gain size │ Max loss Sym  Buy │  Thu  Mon  Tue  Wed  Thu  Fri │ Beg   End   TZA  MR26 │ -0.1  19  +0.6  19  +0.9  19  +1.9  20  +1.4  20  +1.5  20  │ -0.3 -0.1 SRTY ¹  AL01 │ -0.2  19  +0.2  19  +1.1  20  +1.0  20  +1.0  20  │ -1.1 -0.7 SRTY ²  AL05 │ -0.8  19  │ -1.5 -1.5 IWM │ +14.4     +12.9     +12.2     +10.4     +11.4     +11.1     │ me │ -2.1 -1.5 -0.9 +1.0 +0.4 -0.3 │ floor │ -2.4 -2.9 -2.7 -3.3 -1.2 -2.5 │

floor: There is something wrong with the max-loss calculations.  The changes on Monday and Wednesday make no sense.  I’ve tried fiddling with the calculations, but the attempted revisions just made it worse.

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
TZA		(Not yet)	MR 26 09:34			$37.04		(Not yet)
SRTY ¹		AL 01 13:00			$24.11			AL 02 10:00	(Didn’t)		$23.67			-0.4%	+1.0%
		AL 03 10:00	(Didn’t)		$24.44			AL 04 12:00			$25.42			+0.8%
SRTY ²		AL 05 10:00			$25.98	$25.99		(Not yet)

TZA: Reverse stock-split before Tuesday’s open, so adjusted buy-price is now 4× (and share count now ¼×) its original value.  Still waiting for the model to issue another “buy” signal, which might happen next week.  Profits OK so far!

SRTY ¹: Because of the stock-split, my standing stop-loss order for TZA was silently cancelled.  As a result, the robot errored out while trying to update the stop on Tuesday at 10am, so it never got around to selling SRTY.  On Wednesday, the robot once again failed to update the stop for TZA and thus failed to “buy back” SRTY (which I still had anyway, due to Tuesday’s problem).  For once, the errors were in my financial favour!

SRTY ²: Bought at nearly the worst possible time: SRTY opened with a gap-up, then I bought it, then it spent the rest of the day falling.  If the market tanks next week due to the NFP report, this will turn out to have been a good move, if poorly timed.