Last week's trades

Hey Everyone,
A few weeks ago Liam used markers to transform himself into Spiderman (see Kim's blog at http://splitendcafe.blogspot.com/2010/07/wherein-i-fire-my-television-for-being.html for that tale). After that we thought we put all of the markers out of reach but last week he came to find me and show me his new costume. He had found a black marker and drawn Ls (for Liam) all the way up each leg and arm and on his torso and his face. Looking back it was pretty funny. At the time I was mad enough that I didn't think to take a picture. On Thursday I finally got out of that trade that I talked about last week. I took a big loss on that but not every trade can be a winner and I learned some valuable lessons. I closed out at 1.30698 and at this moment the price is 1.32203. I would be down another 150 pips if I were still holding it. I decided to document the trade and what I learned on my blog at http://bendubois.blogspot.com. I want to try and do that for some of my exceptionally good and exceptionally bad trades. That trade took me down to about 70% return on my trading which is actually excellent for six weeks. Just not as good as the 116% that I was up last week. My trading has gone very well since then and I think that I will have made up my loss by the end of this week. I will report on that next week. Our little trading group is growing. There are a few of us now that share notes at 3pm every day before we make our daily overnight trade and we haven't picked a loser yet. If you have some money to invest and you want to get in on the action let me know. I attached my trading statement through Friday.

Ben Dubois

Trading log

The big loser

Last Friday morning I was watching the market after the European bank stress test results and things had settled out after the announcement. There was a bit of a downtrend and it was supported by my indicators so I was starting to scalp short positions. This is what my charts looked like when I got in:

 The red arrow on the upper left is the 15 minute candlestick right after the stress test announcement. The red circle is where I entered my trade. The charts on the right are what my indicators looked like going into the trade. I felt comfortable short because of the recent downward trend and the formation on the tactical indicator on the 15 minute chart. I probably should have waited with the 30 minute so oversold but I thought that I could still easily get my 5 pips. I also thought that if I didn't get them right away the worst case scenario would be a retracement over the next hour and I would get out either way.

This is what I was looking at when the market closed on Friday a few hours after entering my trade. The red line and circle show my entry point. It never showed any strong signs of retracing and by market close I was down 94 pips. My longer term charts were all showing over bought so I felt confident that it would retrace at some point in the next few days.

This is what I saw Thursday morning. The red circle lower and left is my entry and the the circle near the top is where I decided to take my loss. You can see that once it crossed 1.2980 it kept trying to break back through to lower levels and it was never able to do so and finally broke upward. I believe that it could still retrace in the near future but I am glad to be out. While I was watching this trade on Thursday morning I was re-watching some training videos and the presenter was talking about the opportunity cost of being in a bad trade and how sometimes it is better to take your loss and start fresh rather than spend a lot of time trying to get out even. Hearing that again in this context definitely influenced my decision to take my loss. I had been able to make some trades while I was in this trade because I am always careful to not over leverage but I could only trade in one direction and I was trading scared. I would compare it to being in a fight with one arm tied behind my back.

I still have a lot to learn about trading and I learn far more from bad trades than good ones. When my trading has gone so well it is good to have a reality check. Not every trade has to be, or can be, a winner and sometimes it will be better to take a loss and free up my account and my mind and continue trading rather than wait it out and miss out on other opportunities to profit.

Last week's trades

Hey everyone,

We went up to Oakley over the weekend and we stopped on a dirt road next to some sheep to show the kids. Liam was watching a movie so when I asked him if he knew what kind of animal's those were he looked up for a second and said, "Oh yeah, those are elephants." Then he went right back to his movie. I guess his movie was better than seeing some silly elephants. I attached a screen shot of what I look at when I trade. The image is wide because I have two screens. I keep my indicators up on my right screen and I usually keep my Metatrader 4 platform and dailyfx.com's live news feed up on my left screen. On the Metatrader 4 window I expanded the trade log so you could see all of the trades that I made last week. As of Friday my account is up 116% since I started live trading five weeks ago. Over that period I have averaged $232 and about 2 hours of trading per day. I did get a little greedy and got into a bad trade Friday afternoon. I am still in the trade and my indicators are still looking good for a retracement. I am looking for 1.2815 on the EUR/USD pair. I will let you know how that goes next week. There are a few of us that are starting to communicate on a regular basis about our trading, especially the trade we make every day at 3pm. If you are interested in getting in on the action we are always looking for more people. The idea is that together we are greater than the sum of our parts.

Until next week,
Ben

Last week's trades

Hey everyone,

Last week we spent a night at the Homestead in Midway. In the morning I turned on the TV for Liam and as soon as we found a cartoon he said, "Dad, start it over." We have had a DVR his whole life and he has never really watched live television. A few minutes later he came over to where I was sitting and said, "Dad, I can't find the pause button on the remote. Can you pause the movie so I can go potty?" I guess we are both pretty spoiled by our DVR.

I have attached a list of all of the trades that I made last week. A few of them were also on the last email. My net profit for the trades opened between Sunday, 7/11, and Thursday, 7/15, was $904. My account is now up 92% in four weeks of trading. Not too shabby for a couple of hours a day at most. I didn't make any trades on Friday because I was impatient on Thursday and got into a bad short that just closed at 5:45 this morning. I made the mistake of thinking that I knew better than my indicators and I ended up picking the bottom for the day with my short position. Fortunately the indicators also showed me that the probability was very high that the price would dip back to my exit in the near future and it did just that this morning. Even with swap fees my bad trade turned into a net gain of $170.92 with a little patience. If you have some money to trade this program is worth checking out. A few people have shown interest in starting a trading pit with me but I think it is a case of the more the merrier. If you are interested in joining our group drop me a line. Until next time.

Ben

Trading log

The latest news

Hey everyone,

I wanted to say hi and let everyone know what I am up to. Kim and I cut Liam's hair yesterday and we decided that it was time for his first mohawk. He wasn't too thrilled about and he said, "I look like the top of a dinosaur." So I said,"Isn't that what you want to look like?" Liam said, "No, I want to look handsome!" It gave us a good laugh. I also have recently completed a sophisticated day trading course and have begun trading a system that I am seeing great results on a daily basis. I included a screen shot of my results for today just so you could see. My best day so far was $430 in just a few hours of trading. My account is up 78% since I started trading just over 3 weeks ago. I don't know how long this will last but I wanted to make sure that if you had some money to trade that you checked this program out. I know of a couple groups that are doing trading pits and I would like to get something like that together with people I know so we could all help each other out. Until next time.

Ben

Cheapening the Office

It looks like this has been beat to death in various news outlets but I would like to put in my two cents. Soon after his election I began to see that Barack Obama was cheapening the office of the President of the United States through various actions. I feel that in order to maintain the respect that the office should have certain things should be avoided, i.e. appearing on a late night talk show. This week I heard about a new low for President and the administration. Joe Biden said, to Barack Obama, that health reform is a big f****** deal on live television. Here is a link to video of his statement. He obviously didn't intend for it to be heard on the mic but I don't believe that excuses him. This behavior is not unexpected for Joe Biden. In fact you could say that it is expected. The action that cheapens the office is the fact that there is a t-shirt now available for purchase on Barack Obama's official website celebrating Joe Biden's statement. Rather than distancing himself from this profane statement Barack has chosen to embrace and promote it. I can't say that I am surprised but it is disappointing.

Helpful Hawaiian Rental Yard

This photo is priceless

Thanks to my friend Tim for this one. Very Presidential, as he said.

My first time

Something everyone should know

Liam at Pleasant Green Splashpad

Taking it to the next level

I just edited my first video and posted it on YouTube.

Visit My New Virtual Location

My wife made me a new header and moved me to a new location. I suppose that I should write something related to my new online identity. I don't really participate heavily in copyright violation like I used to. I have a gigantic digital music collection, but it seems silly now because I haven't even listened to a third of it and I probably never will. It felt like an accomplishment in some way to amass this collection and I still add to it periodically, but I try to add stuff that I like, and will listen to, now. Otherwise it is just a waste of space. I thought that 800GB would be enough, but my video collection is rapidly encroaching on my music collection.

These days I try to stay in the gray areas of copyright violation like broadcast television shows. I also like to complain about the DMCA, but I'll save that for another post, if there ever is another post.

Seth's Married

My brother got married this weekend and this is how exicted he was.

And this is how cute my son was.

I'm Joost

I've been playing with this cool new iptv program called joost and I really like it. Yesterday they gave me a lot of invites and I don't really know who likes this kind of stuff. It reminded me of the old days when I used to write about things that I liked and I thought other people would like on my blog. It seems like they are adding content every day now. None of it is new and as far as I can tell little or none of it was produced specifically for Joost. For me it is a great way to watch what I want when I want and it keeps getting better as they add content. I thought it was a waste of time when I started using it and I had watched everything that interested me, but now I always run out of time before I get through the things that I want to watch and then there are even more interesting things every time I log on. I recommend Stella, The World's Strongest Man, and the National Geographic documentary on avalanches. If you like tv like I do you should check this out. Let me know and I'll send you an invite.

Unwritten Law

I get my hopes up so high for things because I remember how great they were the last time. UL almost reached my expectations.


As Fast As...


Fenix TX



Unwritten Law


Bad picture of great reverse mullet. Long in front and short in back.

Fun with Pierre, Alejandro and Raul

Up until last night I thought that my stereotype of car salesmen was wrong. I had only dealt with two salesmen, but they were both low pressure. I felt like the car buying experience was going to be enjoyable. Not the nightmare that I had heard about from some people. My favorite salesman never even asked me if I wanted to buy the car. I had to ask him if we could look at some numbers. (He might have thought that I wasn’t serious about the Audi A4 3.0.)

Last night I went to Larry H Miller Used Car Supermarket. I got this flyer in the mail that said I could win $5,000. I have gotten them before, but never at the same time that I was looking for a car. I pulled up their inventory on car soup and saw that they had four Jettas and 2 Passats. So I called to see if the online inventory was right. It was so I headed down. On a side note: the flyer was for a one day deal the day after I called and when I called they said they would honor it anyway even though it was only supposed to be the one day. When I got there I found out that they actually mail out thousands of flyers a week and have the “one day” deals two days a week. It is a ploy to get people in the door. I suspected all along, but I was sucked in by the prospect of winning $5,000.

Back to the story. I got to the lot and met Pierre. I told Pierre that I had called and talked to Alejandro so he took me in to meet Alejandro but he was the floor manager so Pierre was my salesman du jour. There was a black Jetta right out front. I had told them that I wanted a black Jetta, so I test drove it around the block. I understand that silence is awkward, but I don’t feel really comfortable about a guy pretending that we are old buddies either. The Jetta drove nicely. It was a 1.8T with a lot of options. So we went inside to talk about numbers and it was a lot higher than I wanted to go. Talking numbers involved Pierre and Alejandro. In retrospect I think that Pierre might be relatively new and Alejandro was helping him out. They kept asking me how much I was willing to pay. I can’t say, “I am willing to pay the least amount that you are willing to part with the car for,” so this puts me in an uncomfortable position. I know that if I say a number and it is within their acceptable range then I am pretty much done. I want to pay just a little bit less than their lowest possible offer, but there is no way to get their lowest offer out of them. At least that is what I thought. Alejandro went to the counter where the guy who comes up with the numbers sits, we’ll call him Raul. He came back with a list which he described as super secret, but I am special so I got to see the magic list. This is the list of how much they are into all of these cars. Basically their bottom line if they are going to make any money. For the car that I drove the list said about $15,500. They had already come down from the “list” price of about $17,500 to about 16,500. Alejandro asked me if there was somewhere in between where we could meet so that I could be happy and he could make a little money. I was wishy washy so Alejandro and Pierre let me take the car home to show my wife. I liked the car but it wasn’t an Audi, and that magical Audi is still floating around in my head. I started to think that it drove nicely. When I stomped on the gas in first it came right off the line and then the tires broke loose when the turbo kicked in. That was fun. But, I don’t need leather seats or heated seats or anything like that. I started thinking that all I need is a car that is fun to drive without all that expensive crap. I think I would like this car better without the extras and for about $12,000.

So, I had already made up my mind not to buy the car before I got home to show my wife. I took her around the block in it just for fun and then headed back to break the bad news to Pierre and Alejandro. Maybe they could tell what I was thinking by the look on my face, but my recollection is that Alejandro said that he could give me the car for $14,500 before I even said anything. I want to point out at this point that $14,500 is $1,000 less than the number from the magical list that we couldn’t go below previously. I was already late for something else that I was supposed to be doing in Bountiful so I told Pierre and Alejandro that it was still too much and I was looking for something more in the $12,000 range and they could call me if anything came up. Before I even got to Bountiful Pierre had called my house to tell me that he had found a black Jetta in my price range. Then today he called again to tell me that now he had two black Jettas in my price range. It was as if it was meant to be.

I have a full time job and a family so I can’t just go to the used car lot any time. The earliest that I could go was about 7:00pm. I didn’t think that was a big deal. Pierre said that he would make sure someone was there to let me test drive it. I thought that meant he wasn’t going to be there and I didn’t think that was a big deal. When I got there Pierre was there. Nice surprise, I didn’t have to deal with someone new. So I took out the newly arrived Jetta. It was basically the same without any frills. It was the nicer of the two that came in today. It wasn’t fun to drive like most of the other cars that I had driven. No turbo. I think that’s what was missing.

I think that I should have started with cheap cars and then worked my way up rather than the other way around. I was trying to be frugal so I decided to give Pierre a chance to make it worth my while. I think that the first number he showed me was more than the $14,500 that he offered the loaded one to me for. That seems illogical so I might be wrong about that. Anyway he gave me another offer right around $13,000 with taxes, title, etc. I still didn’t think that was worth it.

Remember Raul? At this point Pierre took me over to talk to Raul who I had never talked to before. In fact, I had only seen other salesmen talk to Raul. Not regular folks like me. He sat behind a glass wall. I guess that is so he doesn’t have to talk quietly to keep customers from hearing him. He seemed like a nice guy. He had me come around the counter to see the computer screen that he was looking at so I would be sure that he was being straight with me. He showed me a number and described it the same way Alejandro described the number on the magic list from the night before. He couldn’t possibly go below this number because he would lose money. I was of course skeptical and I began to tell Raul about the epiphany I had on the way home the previous night about how I had only driven German cars in my search for a new vehicle for myself and I thought that maybe I should give some other engineers a chance to impress me before I go with a German car. Either Raul didn’t buy my story or he didn’t care. He started to talk about how he was going to get me into a car tonight no matter what it takes. He said that even if he loses money he wants my business because he knows that I know people that are going to buy cars and I am going to send them his way. No matter how much I insisted that tonight might not be the night for me he insisted that it was. I gave up on convincing him.

Pierre took me over to another computer and we looked at the carfax vehicle history report, which had no problems. Then Raul sent out a sheet with his new offer. It had the number from the magic list to compare to his offer and it showed that the dealership was only going to make $27 if he sold it to me at this price. I asked for the book values and headed home to show Kim. When I got home I thought that it would be a good idea to verify the N.A.D.A. and Kelley book values that they gave me. They told me $12,650 for N.A.D.A. and $12,295 for Kelley.

When I ran the N.A.D.A. number myself I came up with $10,925. For those of you that aren’t good at arithmetic like me I used Excel to find out that is a difference of $1,370. I thought that couldn’t possibly be right and I must have missed some option or something.

At that point I noticed that the Kelley book value that they gave me had the options listed. It said that an automatic transmission added $535 to the value, a multi compact disk player added $300, power seats $35, rear spoiler $100 and Premium wheels $135. The problem is that the car that I drove home didn’t have any of those things. When I used the trusty spread sheet to add up the new value without all of the fake options it was $11,090. That is a difference of $1,205. When I ran the car through Kelley blue book myself, I got $11,055. At this point I was pissed. I felt like they had deceived me. They had used these numbers to show me that what they were offering me was a good price when in reality they were off by 10%.

Unfortunately I am not good at confrontation. I say unfortunately because I was really excited about confronting them about it but I knew that it would never go the way I would act it out in my mind on the way back to the dealership and I would probably leave with no satisfaction whatsoever.

I got back and Pierre met me at the door. I told him that I thought that the price was too high still and then I started to tell him how I had run the book numbers on my own and the ones he gave me were way off. I showed him all of the things on the list that were not on the car. In Pierre’s defense he didn’t put the numbers together. He went over to talk to Raul about what had happened. Raul had put the numbers together. Pierre came back and acted like it was no big deal and then he asked me how much I was willing to pay for the car. That was exactly what I didn’t want to hear at that point. I told him that I would have to think about it overnight. When I said that, he became visibly upset and said that he had been there since 8:30 in the morning and that he had stayed around because I was coming in. I thought that was ridiculous. I didn’t care how long he had been there and I couldn’t believe that he had blown it off like it was no big deal. I told him that I felt like I had been deceived and I wasn’t going to make a deal like that. Then he got up and walked away. No hand shake, not another word.

On my way home I went through the things that I would have said if I were quicker on my feet. Something about the whole thing being B.S. and how could he get upset with me when the numbers that he was using to convince me that it was a great deal were 10% high? I was fired up.

I look forward to more car shopping on Saturday. It is a lot more fun to be in situations like this when I hold all of the cards.

2002 Audi A4 3.0 Quattro Sedan AWD

Last night I went and test drove this car. I found it on Autotrader. I was really excited because it has a six cylinder engine and a six-speed manual transmission. I have always wanted a six speed transmission. They let me take it over night so that I could show my wife. It was a lot of fun to drive. The most fun yet. I can't even think of any complaints. Just the price.

2002 Audi A4 1.8 Turbo Quattro Sedan AWD

They had a nice Jetta that I test drove next. It was chipped and it had low profile tires. It was also fun to drive but pretty rough with the low profile tires. I can't find any pictures of it. After that we went over to the dealers other lot where they had this one:


I liked this one. It had the transmission that can be automatic or manual and in manual there is no clutch and there are buttons on the steering wheel to shift. Some genius thought of that. In automatic it was more sluggish than I liked and the transmission seemed to hang up a little when I was braking. I wondered if that was an issue with switching between maual and automatic. Close but no cigar.

2002 Audi A4 1.8 Turbo Quattro Sedan AWD Grey

I am looking for a new car and I want to document my search here. This is the fist car that I test drove.


I liked the car but I didn't love the color.