Len’s Journal

[LEONARDZIR]

May 2024
 TLT.  + 14.91%
Weekly. Trending Stocks +1.76%
Futures -2.34%
USMOMO. + 7.46%
ALL WEATHER. +1.4%
DAILY TREND Stocks + 2.38%

TRADING PORTFOLIO  + 3.4%

Daily trend stocks is my discretionary trading. Mulling whether I want to continue discretionary trading.

 

[LEONARDZIR]

June 2024

US Momo. -1.41%
TLT. +3.3%
Daily Futures. +0.16%
Weekly Trend Stocks. -1.75%
Discretionary. +0.8%
US all weather. + 1.3%
Total. approx +1%

Just came back from fly fishing for trout on the Missouri River in Montana. The Missouri is a blue ribbon river for trout fishing in the US. Great fishing, gorgeous scenery. A bonus on this trip was no cellphone reception for several days. So no internet and no trading or investing , just fishing.

[RichardKoziel]

Nice, back to nature and no electronics. Sounds like you had a great trip.

Best, Rick

[Nick Radge]

Sounds amazing Len. I’ve never been fly fishing but a favourite show of mine is ‘A River Somewhere’ which is based on a light hearted doco about two comedians traveling the world in pursuit of their fly fishing passion.

In September I’m off to Sette Cama which is way off the grid in west Africa. While its best known as a fly fishing destination, we’ll be doing regular lure fishing. Here’s a short film about it – well worth the watch.

[LEONARDZIR]

Nick,
Great film ! Looks like a great experience. Thanks for sharing
Regards,
Len

[LEONARDZIR]

Thanks Rick

[LEONARDZIR]

The film reminds me of my trip to Kodiak, Alaska for salmon fishing several years ago. Several of the streams that we fished had Kodiak bears Fishing with us a couple of hundred yards away. One of the Bears (the Kodiak bear is the second largest bear in the world) made a few false charges at us, which was pretty stressful. However, I don’t think I could handle a bull elephant charging us while fishing in the water. sounds like a fabulous trip.

[LEONARDZIR]

July 2024

TLT. -4.7%
USMomo. -4.7%
Daily TrendStocks -5.72%
Discretionary. -6.1%
US Allweather. +1.7%
Daily Trend Futures. -2.62%

Total Portfolio. -1.9.%

[LEONARDZIR]

I am curious about how everybody handled yesterdays market selloff as well as Nick’s email from the Chartist to cancel any pending buy signals and Reduce portfolio exposure to reduce potential losses because of market volatility. Since there weren’t any specific instructions on how much to reduce portfolio exposure I winged it and sold 1/2 my positions in all my stock positions.
The question I am now pondering is when should I go to full exposure. I follow a number of trend models of the SPY based on daily and weekly prices and the only one that has triggered risk off is Basso’s trend model( in his book “All Weather Trader”) so I will use that to time reentry.
I am curious how other people handled yesterdays selling.

[Nick Radge]

Just for clarification, one of the main reasons why we send those [rare] emails is to connect to our clients and let them know that we know things are tough. We pass the decision making across to them and allow them to take themselves off the hook if they deem it appropriate. Dare I say, it can also help in a compliance scenario.

As for me personally, I instructed Zach to not enter any more positions in the HFT strategy. We continued to hold full positions across all other strategies….and yes, I’ve given back about half the years gains…but, as was pointed out, I’ve been through this before (and worse), so we’ll travel the same route and build back up again. 

 

[LEONARDZIR]

Nick,
Thank you for your reply. Basically I am trading 6 systems. At this point I cut TLT and USMomo to 1/2 position size. I initally cut All weather by 1/2 at yesterdays close but changed my mind and increased that portfolio to full size at todays open because I realized I am comfortable with the historical drawdown. Meanwhile my daily trend portfolio went risk off. So of the 6 systems 2 are at 1/2 size, one is risk off and 3 are risk on at full size. I am comfortable with my decision. I will return to full size with usmomo and tlt when the trend turns up.
Meanwhile, I realize one of my weaknesses as a trader is thinking about the total amount of money I lost over the last 2 weeks versus the actual percentage loss primarily because of the size of my portfolio. However like yourself I’ve been through this drawdown many times before so I just continue to push the buttons.
Regards
Len

[GlenPeake]

FWIW;

I’m still trading as normal….. no adjustments to any positions. Still trading MR systems and placing orders everyday… Was basically 100% long in most of my multi-day MR systems since late last week, so some DD there….. SELL order’s being placed tonight in MR’s, as the system has generated SELL signals etc and placing BUY orders for new setups in MR’s as per normal.
 

[LEONARDZIR]

After mulling over Nicks reply to my post I went back to full position size on my stock systems yesterday.

[LEONARDZIR]

August 2024

TLT, All Weather, US momo, Daily Trend Stocks = +0.8%
Daily Trend Futures =-0.09%
Discretionary =+3.6%

Had a brief bout of “beginners thinking” when the volatility hit in early August. Surprised me since I have been a systematic trader for a number of years.
My account was down over 200k and I was obsessing over the number instead of the percentage which was small. Read Nick’s email from the Chartist which suggested reducing portfolio size because of the volatility. So I cut most of my stock positions by 1/2. However, Nick posted that he had not changed his allocation and the drawdown was nothing new. I scrambled to go back to full position size and ended up for the month. Lesson learned( I hope).

[ScottBilton]

Hi Len, I think we were all thinking the same thing at end of July / start of August. It felt brutal.

I was twitching when placing trades for that first proper week in August.

Then the fear in the markets was seen as totally overcooked thin summer trading, but it didn’t feel like that at the time.

I read a Bloomberg piece that said that since the VIX index is calculated based on live options bid / asks, the summer volume meant some of the spreads got huge causing a spike in the VIX index. It doesn’t consider volume traded at all.

The VIX futures never got that far, so next time I’ll be checking the VIX futures to check the two are reasonably in line with each other.

[Author]

Posts