Subscribe Feed (RSS)TEVA, BIDU and TMTA
May 10th, 2006 by eyal | Filed under Day Trading. |
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It was a good day today. I could have pressed even harder but I don’t normally take more than 4 positions - it just becomes a mess to handle - and MFLX was a no go so these were the positions I had today:
TEVA: Nice narrow range 3rd bar, I closed half in the morning to lock in some profits and closed the rest end of day for total of 4.25R
BIDU: Slightly higher % risk, closed end of day for 2.35R
TMTA: Refused to budge most of the day and closed for 1R
So the total is 7.6R which is frankly my largest single day P&L. Which makes me realize I tend to play a bit too tight maybe. Anyways the other interesting stocks on list were all on the short side: PVH and ESCL (which I had yesterday as well).
With all due respect, 4, 2, 1 or 7 R is meaningless to me as a reader. Is it not true that I could have an R Value of whatever I like on any trade depending on my stop loss? It has meaning to you as you know the values behind it. You are sharing, why not share the values? Anyway, nice job on your trades!
Hi Glenn, That’s a fair comment. The R means the amount I was risking on any single trade, so that if I were stopped out I’d lose that 1R. If all 3 positions today stopped out I’d be -3R for the day. Whether that 1 R = $100 or $500 for example, is of less relevance in my opinion as that depends on one’s account size, risk appetite and level of experience. I prefer to keep my public trading record in R values and not $ values. In my own records I also try to use R wherever is possible instead of $ to measure how I’m doing because just this year I’ve upped my R twice, if I looked just at $ amounts I wouldn’t be able to tell how I was doing now vis a vis when my R was lower earlier in the year.
Thanks for visiting.
I wrote a really long reply that I decided was worthy of a blog entry in itself. See http://www.thinkingstuff.com/blog/2006/05/to-r-or-not-to-r.htm
In summary, just using R seems to be the way to go.
Oh, and nice work on the 7R :-)
Congrats on the record day.
Good post Sharky and thanks.
Thanks Mike.
I agree with both what Glenn and eyal are saying :^)
In agreement with Glenn, it would be MORE interesting to know the actual numbers behind R - as it could be that R=$5 and therefor 7R isn’t so exciting.
However, eyal has every right to his privacy - I mean Golly - isn’t it enought that he is exposing his trading record as much as he is?
And if you can keep going around 7R, then even is R=$5 - that would be exciting…
[...] Recently a comment was left on Eyal’s blog in which his use of R was called ‘meaningless’. The person who left the comment said that they would prefer to see dollars instead of ‘R’. Sharkey made a great effort to explain why this was a baseless argument. Eventhough his explanation was wonderful, it lacked something important. That’s why I wanted to add that little bit because I think it should make it clear why using R is superior to using dollars. [...]
Congratulations Eyal on the great day.
I would also add that if your R value is a consistent percentage of your trading account, it will naturally grow with your account size. IMHO the process of trading is much more valuable to me as a reader than what the R value may be.
Thanks again for posting your trades.
Hi Eric, the 7R was obviously an abberation, though indeed a nice one to have.
John - Thanks. My R is not consistent as a %, it goes up slower than my equity. The reason is that trading is a lot about psychology so I want to make sure I am ready to raise the R before I do so rather than let it rise by itself. I know I am sacrificing performance as compounding will be slower, it’s a trade off. Having said that maybe in the future I will look at just using a formula with %, I’ll look into this again at some point.
[...] There’s been more discussions on the trading blogsphere related to the in/famous R as measure of Risk and trading performance. One of my previous posts which had an abberation positive result drew some attention - now where’s everyone when I sit here and nothing is happening out there or I take a couple of losses huh? ;) But that’s another story. So anyways here’s a list of posts I noticed in case you missed any. [...]