March Month in Review

Was I profitable? Oh yes. If you look at my StockTickr calendar view, you’ll see that I only lost money one day this month. Also, until the last week of the month, I was making trades at least three days a week. Pretty good, for me, though I’m always trying to improve in that area.

What happened the last week? Well, I rarely trade Thursdays anyway, and I had connectivity issues on Wednesday, so that hurt. Also, I think I just (for whatever reason) was too slow to hit the big moves in time. I probably need more sleep!

I hereby declare March the “Month of Twitter“! Once I put their badge on my blog, several others quickly followed. Now, we have a pretty thriving community of twittering stock bloggers. I think it’s a much more efficient way to exchange thoughts and ideas than instant messaging. It’s less “chatty,” though it does degenerate into chat-like atmosphere at times. If you haven’t joined the fun, please do! Yes, they are overwhelmed by their sudden popularity, but have some faith that they will fix their server issues soon enough!

As I mentioned previously I’m going to report performance along each trade type from now on. So, that means lots more tables! Hopefully you’ll find it interesting, but if not the overall summary table is still here like always. I’m also going to start doing year-to-date alongside the monthly numbers. All of this is pulled right out of StockTickr, by the way…

Let’s get started! (If you want to know more about what the trade types mean, check out the post about them, which has the definitions I’m using) Here are the tables:

Overall Performance as of March 2007

  March YTD
Total P/L: 26.53 R 41.63 R
Trades Taken: 14 38
Winners: 12 (85.7%) 28 (73.7%)
Losses/BreakEvens: 2 10
Expectancy: 1.90 R 1.10 R
Biggest Winner: 9 R 9 R
Biggest Loser: -1.15 R -1.15 R

Scalping Performance

  March YTD
Total P/L: 19.25 R 23.74 R
Trades Taken: 3 9
Winners: 3 (100%) 9 (100%)
Losses/BreakEvens: 0 0
Expectancy: 6.42 R 2.64 R
Biggest Winner: 9 R 9 R
Biggest Loser: N/A N/A

Dummy Trading Performance

  March YTD
Total P/L: 0.97 R 2.02 R
Trades Taken: 5 10
Winners: 4 (80%) 7 (70%)
Losses/BreakEvens: 1 3
Expectancy: 0.19 R 0.20 R
Biggest Winner: 0.95 R 1.41 R
Biggest Loser: -1.15 R -1.15 R

Box Play Performance

  March YTD
Total P/L: 0 R 3.88 R
Trades Taken: 1 5
Winners: 0 (0%) 4 (80%)
Losses/BreakEvens: 1 1
Expectancy: 0.00 R 0.78 R
Biggest Winner: N/A 1.06 R
Biggest Loser: 0 R (breakeven) 0 R (breakeven)

Triangle Plays Performance

  March YTD
Total P/L: 3.20 R 3.20 R
Trades Taken: 2 3
Winners: 2 (100%) 2 (66.7%)
Losses/BreakEvens: 0 1
Expectancy: 1.60 R 1.07 R
Biggest Winner: 2 R 2 R
Biggest Loser: N/A 0 R (breakeven)

Breakout Plays Performance

  March YTD
Total P/L: 3.11 R 9.30 R
Trades Taken: 3 4
Winners: 3 (100%) 4 (100%)
Losses/BreakEvens: 0 0
Expectancy: 1.04 R 2.33 R
Biggest Winner: 1.2 R 6.19 R
Biggest Loser: N/A N/A

MultiDay Pattern Plays Performance

  March YTD
Total P/L: N/A 0.22 R
Trades Taken: 0 2
Winners: N/A 1 (50.0%)
Losses/BreakEvens: N/A 1
Expectancy: N/A 0.11 R
Biggest Winner: N/A 0.22 R
Biggest Loser: N/A 0 R (breakeven)

Mistakes

These are trades where I accidentally pressed the wrong button, or something like that. I’d obviously like to eliminate them!

  March YTD
Total P/L: N/A -0.5 R
Trades Taken: 0 1
Winners: N/A 0 (0%)
Losses/BreakEvens: N/A 1
Expectancy: N/A -0.5 R
Biggest Winner: N/A N/A
Biggest Loser: N/A -0.5 R

Discretionary Plays Performance

The other type of trade I’m trying to eliminate! No discretionary trades in March.

  March YTD
Total P/L: N/A -0.23 R
Trades Taken: 0 4
Winners: N/A 1 (25.0%)
Losses/BreakEvens: N/A 3
Expectancy: N/A -0.06 R
Biggest Winner: N/A 0.34 R
Biggest Loser: N/A -0.32 R

6 Responses

  1. john Says:

    great job!

  2. Richard Says:

    Thanks! Since I make so few trades, each category is still pretty light, trade-wise for the year. So, no meaningful stats yet, except on the aggregate data. But, it seems clear that there’s lots of room for improvement in my dummy trades. They are not worth the effort, as it is…

  3. misstrade Says:

    Looks like you should scalp more. Impressive numbers!!

  4. Richard Says:

    Thanks, misstrade. They are definitely my most profitable play, and I love that I am not sitting in the markets waiting to be ambushed by news or whatnot. Still, there’s that lingering question about whether I could maintain 100% win rate if I played them more often. StockTickr tells me I’ve only lost money on 1 scalp play since last September!

  5. stocktickr blog » Blog Archive » March Review - Good News and Bad News Says:

    [...] when you trade different systems or you just want to track different aspects of your trading. (See Richard Todd’s March review for another good example.) I tagged this new system with “momentum” and my dummy/fib [...]

  6. Prospectus Says:

    Great performance and great write-up!

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