Friday, September 23, 2011

Gut it out

After the recent weeks of market turmoil and tanking I decided to try to get my legs back under me in the day-trading world.  Yes, day trading is foolish if you're reckless and don't establish parameters and rigorously adhere to them.

I bought a VERY tiny position of HOU.  Horizons 2X oil bull.  If oil goes up 1% it goes up 2%.  If oil goes DOWN 1% then you go down 2%.  Plus since it has to do tricky things to keep it's relationship decent to the oil market (which is another topic for another day) it has what's called a "tracking error" which means that if you hold it long term you're not going to make any money.  They have to do some VERY tricky things to keep the percentages locked up with the changes in oil.

Remember, it's not directly linked to the valuation of oil... just the percentage change.

I held my position for a whopping 15 minutes and then sold for a blistering profit of 1.1%

Had I risked more money it could have been a 3% profit, (thanks to trading commissions eating into the profit) but I was holding firmly to my own set of rules for this sort of thing and that's as much "risk" as I was willing considering oil has tanked so much and so quickly.

I made a whopping $10.01 on my trade today.  I think I'll go buy some lunch.

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