I do not trade a lot. I very rarely trade with gearing. Over the past 11 years since I started keeping a trading diary, I have made more "winning" trades than losing trades - not by much, but still I am up in terms of % trades sold in the green. My trading portfolio, however, is down. This is due to two rather large losing trades. The first I neglected to set a stop loss, and the second (I'll admit, I tried a small scalp when SNH was plummeting) the price fell way through my stop loss. But what really irritates me, is my last losing trade two days ago. I have owned and watch SPAR for almost 20 years now. I keep track of its price and value according to limits that suit me. So for me, when SPP drops into a PE range around 14, it starts to creep into value territory - for me - given its historical range. So when SPP started to drop into this range on around the 5th March, I thought I would take a small long trading position, and set a reasonably conservative trailing stop loss of 15%. A Covid-19 buy, so to speak. I bought in at 16900, and had a target exit of around 18500, and i thought this fair given that its ranged up to 20000 recently. Anyway I got stopped out when SPP dropped on Friday 13th (go figure). Theory is I should be happy that I didnt lose all. Problem is, I still think there was or is value there, and lo and behold today, the price has been hitting the mid 18000s. Ok - so this is irritating for me, because my value theory seems correct (up to today at least), but my stop loss was too tight (15%!!!), so my system needs adjusting....and the big adjustment I need to make is that I MUST NOT TRADE ANYTHING DURING UNCERTAIN TIMES!!!! Clearly no matter whether I think a share or index might be value and a buy, I need to stay clear until there is very clear direction (I read Simon's blogs, but clearly dont absorb his rules)....lol. Anyway.....
... View more