I'll try to keep this one short and sweet.

Between mid-October and early December, I'd accumulated a very tasty 30%. In the space of a week I'd given half of that back - God Bless Christmas coming when it did to take me out of the market and allow me to reset.

What frustrates me the most is that I knew I was being a fool while I was doing it, but I kept doing it!!

Although I have Daily Loss Limits (3%) which I adhered to, I kept going back day after day despite knowing I was in a foul mood and throwing money away. It sounds incredibly silly and utterly ridiculous, but I did it. And can't imagine I'm the only one to have ever done it and won't be the last :P

Does anyone have any metrics, criteria etc. that they use to tell themselves "Bro, just walk away for a month"?

Oh God, he's back...

Here I am! New and improved :D

I took a break from social media of all sorts, including CommonStock, as they were taking up far too much of my trading and learning time. And I've become a much better trader because of it; I've been able to pour so much extra time into my strategy, my technique, my skills, my psychology...But what you gain on the swings, you lose on the roundabouts.

As part of my development, I've been doing SWOT Analyses on myself. And "Loneliness" went down as one of my Threats. I can't speak for those who trade and invest as part of an organisation but if you're doing it solely for yourself as I am then fuck me; it is probably the loneliest thing I've ever done.

Let me reassure you that I'm fortunate enough not to be "truly lonely" - I have friends, family, colleagues, etc. And those who have had the pleasure of being on Zoom calls or @nathanworden's Stock Pitching Game with me will know I'm fairly outspoken.

But when you don't have trading colleagues to chat with, your friends all gave up when they learnt the market isn't full of GameStops and AMCs, and your family avoid saying certain words and terms so that you don't butt-in with "Ackshually...", then trading can be a very lonely game.

So, here I am again :) Hoping to remove this Loneliness threat from my SWOT analysis and hopefully reconnect with old friends and also potentially meet some new users who may have joined since!

I'll be sure to resume my posting, albeit of a slightly different nature than before, but please absolutely feel free to jump in my DMs for a chat or if you fancy a catch up!

Thanks all!

@commonstock if you're still taking tag recommendations, "Psychology" definitely wants to be there :D

Hi all! It's been a while since my last post as I've been taking a break for Christmas, but this idea has been eating away at me and I'd like to start giving it some legs.

I'm a Technical Analyst puritan and, although I'm based in the UK, I only trade US stocks.

I genuinely love trading and looking at charts but I'm struggling to devote the time required to do it all by myself:

What I would love is to find a few other technical analysts that look at the same markets I do, on similar timescales (a bit more on this below), that can meet consistently with each other once a week.

As a small team we could cover more charts than as individuals therefore identifying more trades and also have more than one perspective on the same chart:

Although the trading timescales don't need to match exactly, and I expect no-one explicitly holds every position based solely on time, it wouldn't make sense to match a day trader looking at the 1m chart with someone looking at a weekly chart with a view to buy and hold.

I'm hoping to find some people similar to me that focus primarily on the daily charts and typically hold positions for anywhere between 1 week to 2-3 months.

Ability Level/Skill SetCouldn't care less. I don't care if you've never done TA in your life but are interested and would like to explore the concept, or if you're a 20-year TA veteran (plz join).

What matters is that you're interested in TA and would like a group of people to chat with and bounce ideas off of. I fully expect that there will be a bit of churn early on so please don't be deterred if you're unsure; I absolutely won't take offence if you give it a go and decide it's not for you.

Days and TimesGiven that I'm in the UK, and the US (where it seems most of CS users are) has somehow managed to give itself 6 time zones, this one will be a little more tricky. The two which make the most sense to me are Friday around market close or Sunday evening; as we have Christmas this weekend and the New Year the next, I'd like to have things in place for Friday 7th or Sunday 9th of Jan.

Hopefully someone out there is interested, and if you'd like to jump in a group chat and say hi in the coming weeks, the link is https://share.commonstock.com/share?invite=xiJgGg

Looking forward to meeting some new people and talking about technical analysis :)

Breaking my Christmas silence (I'll be back in the New Year) to share this little giggle.

On the bright side, I believe the past two weeks have sufficiently built me an emotional immunity to red days.

There was a lot of talk in late September through October about an impending 10% retracement of the markets before the calendar year ends. Still being new to trading, I'm a sucker for some fear and doubt and I've been keeping an eye out for possible signals of this happening.

I wrote a memo back on November 8th about how the VIX was suggesting an increasingly bearish stance by institutions (tl;dr VIX going up = bad) and it (VIX) looks to have worsened.

The VIX has been unable to break below the support (red dashed line) and enter into new lows, and, despite the failed resistance break a few weeks ago, has very strongly closed above it today. It's most recent relative low, shown by the yellow square, is higher than the previous low, and it almost looks to be forming a cup-and-handle which suggests that volatility will continue to increase.

All 3 of my benchmarks have been showing bearish chart patterns and indicators

The $NDAQ tried to break above the resistance of its trading channel, failed and dropped back in, then wedged/flagged upward. Today was...today.

$SPY looks virtually identical.

Oddly, the $DIA appears to be a few days ahead of the other two in that it looks to have flagged and then broken downwards before the other two (yellow square). It's also forming a downward flag/wedge, which you'd normally expect an upward move from, but it's a lone bull lost in a sea of bears at this point.

The RSI is also showing some very clear bearish divergence for both the $NDAQ and $SPY, but I've not shown that so that it's more clear how the volume is acting...

@chasinggreatness made a great post here where he spoke about 'distribution days', and using that concept and Chris' definition, we can see the $SPY and $NDAQ shifting both volume and price. While the Dow Jones didn't strictly have a distribution day by the same definition, the cascading volume of trades over the past few weeks suggest that we're in for more of the same.

Fucked if I know.

I've never been in this situation before and not really one I foresaw. My strategy dictates that, when a daily loss hits a particular threshold, all positions are closed (to realize any remaining gains) and I take at least a week away (to ensure my emotions don't cloud my decisions); after-market action has me within $21 of that threshold.

A part of me (a fookin' huge part of me) wants to jump the gun and close everything. I've been moaning about the VIX for almost a month now and all 3 of my benchmarks are showing miserable signs. But, only a single trade hit SL today ($CHWY had so much promise, and still does) and none of my open positions are breaking the parameters or reasons for entry.

My head is having a hard time choosing between:

My gut, however, is screaming at me to wait. After all, it's only the first day of this supposedly legendary trading week, and there's apparently also something called a 'Santa Rally' to look forward to in December?

Besides, if everything closes and I walk away with a financial loss, it's only a 'real' loss if I don't learn from it - I sure as shit won't ignore the indices and my analysis next time.

NASDAQ, you ok, bro?

My Watchlist might be bigger than everybody elses, but that doesn't necessarily mean I know how to use it.

Below are a select few and why I'm watching them.

Prior to the recent Chinese tech sell-off, $TME's ADRs were subject to a massive sell-off in March when a ridiculously over-leveraged 'family office' called Archegos was margin-called and defaulted - brief details here. Since then, I've been waiting for another opportunity to get back in but China's crackdown keeps foiling me everytime things look promising. It now looks as though the worst of the storm is over, with the price trading sideaways and away from the previous resistance and around 15% from it's low two months ago. Not one I'm rushing into but there looks to be a whopping 50% upside from it's current price point.

They've pretty much sideways for the whole of 2021 but look to be breaking out of their trading range. I'd expect some more profit-taking from those that bought the dip during the earnings profit-take and the RSI is also sitting in overbought territory. If you recall one of my earlier memos, you might also see a Cup-and-Handle here!

A fairly new one on my Trade Candidates Watchlist, and although it hasn't been public for even 4 months yet, there's a lot of good data for Snap One Holdings.

It looks like the handle of a Cup-and-Handle is forming after the initial IPO rally, and you can interpret the bottom, around $13.14, either as an inverted Head-and-Shoulders or a Triple-Bottom, both of which are great bullish signals. I'll be on $SNPO if the price manages to break and close above $24 on its next rally.

I'm trying to narrow down the candidates for my short-term trading and picking fundamentally strong companies is a no-brainer.

Does anybody know of any websites where I can quickly view a company's ROE/EPS/other key metrics against their peers (in a matrix or table, for example).

Thanks!

Until recently, 'margin' used to scare the bejesus out of me. I migrated to Commonstock from the likes of WSB, where every post not about $GME or $AMC was about being 'margin called' and seeking advice as to what to do.

But as I've learnt more about margin, and started utilising it myself, I've realised that it's not scary at all providing that it's shown the required amount of respect.

By respect, I mean at least learning the basics, how to calculate the various aspects of it, and also employing incredibly strict Risk Management rules and have the discipline to adhere to them.

I use Interactive Brokers (IBKR) and will use their nomenclature for my examples below. The wording may differ slightly for your broker but the concepts and governing regulations will remain the same.

And you have to pay it back in full regardless of the losses you incur. However, depending on your brokerage, the interest accrued on it is incredibly low (for example, IBKR's rate for me is 1.58%). Remember this part for later, please...

Reg T encompasses a lot of rules about the credit that brokerages can provide. The key takeaways for me are:

A cash balance of $500 gives me $1k of buying power - as per Reg T above, I have to post 50% of a position.

I then purchase $1k of stock. My Maintenance Margin is $250 (M/M is 25% of portfolio value as per Reg T)

YIKES! My portfolio value drops $200 and sits at $800! My M/M is now $200 (25% of portfolio) and my NLV is now $300 ($500 cash - $200 loss)

YIKES AGAIN! My portfolio value drops $200 again and sits at $600! My M/M is now $150 (25% of $600) but my NLV is only $100 ($500 cash - total loss of $400).

My Net Liquidating Value is now lower than my Maintenance Margin! I will now be subject to the dreaded 'Margin Call' and will either have to deposit additional cash to make up the short fall or my broker will start to liquidate my positions.

------------------

And that is the crux of using margin. And the above example is exactly why I say Risk Management and unwavering discipline is required. Unmonitored losses can snowball at the best of times but can double when using margin (assuming you posted 50% and borrowed 50%).

As well as employing Stop Losses, I follow the below principles to mitigate my risk:

Sometimes called a Special Margin Account and Special Miscellaneous Account, the SMA can be thought of as the cash available to you. As you only have to post 50% of the position opening in cash, your buying power is always twice the value of your SMA.

If the SMA can be thought of as the cash available, how does it differ? I'll start with the similarities for the sake of clarity:

It differs in that:

You therefore have the ability to trade or invest your unrealized gains without closing your existing positions.

Imagine it's my birthday and you want to buy me a gift (7th of July, btw). Your cash is tied up in positions, and all of them are winners so you want to let them run. But, because they're all winners, the SMA will be holding your unrealized gains - as the SMA represents cash available to you, you are able to withdraw this cash from your brokerage to your bank without closing any of your positions. This is a perfectly legitimate practice and many investors use this functionality instead of taking out traditional loans due to the comparatively low interest rates and the reduced paperwork.

In fact, the only restriction to using the SMA is that it cannot be negative upon market close (or face the Margin Call). Given that it only reduces with security purchases or withdrawals, you'll have no excuse!

!!!ONCE AGAIN!!! exercise strict Risk Management with unwavering discipline. Providing you treat margin with the same care, discipline, and respect that you would for any other trade then it can seriously augment your returns. Treat it with disregard or complacency however and it will ruin you.

P.S. I mentioned earlier about a margin calculator. You can download my personal calculator (correct as of market close 15th November) at https://we.tl/t-vOq6b3MY0P. If you have any questions on its use please feel free to get in touch!

@commonstock there aren't any tags applicable to this post :( Can we add a Tips/Advice/Learn from my Mistakes tag please?