March Trading Tips Results – The Geek Is Back On Track with 24% ROI!
The Geek Is Back On Track – March Trading with the Geek Recap
Those of you who have been following the Geek Account will know that in February I had my first negative month. I make no excuses, sometimes these things happen. The thing to remember is that it didn’t hurt my account and I didn’t even really notice until after the month was over. That was because of my money management system. I only trade small amounts so that I can trade actively and so no trade will hurt me. At one time I had more than 15 trades open at once due to my use of one month expiry. The next month, March, was much much better. I continued to trade by my rules, using my management system and have been able to recap my losses from February and more. As of this writing my win percent is now at 57%, 2 points higher than last month. My best strategy is still trading calls with a win percentage of 70%. At the end of March my account was up about 30% from inception on a realized basis with another 15% in open trades.
March, except for the Crimea situation, was a much less volatile month than the previous. This led me to trade short term weekly calls which means that most of them were closed at the end of the month. These, plus open trades from February resulted in 33 closed trades for the month with 22 winners. This resulted in a 66.7% winning percentile. My cost of trading was $6600, my total return on profitable trades $8140 for a net profit of $1540 or 23.3%. This is not my best month by far but a lot better than a negative month and a lot better than the general market did in March. If the account keeps growing at the current rate I will be increasing my trade size from $200 to $300 to keep it around 1% of cash balance.
Total Cost Of Trading = -$6600
Total Return On Winners = $+8140
Net Profit/Loss = +$1540 (+23.3% return of investment)
Recap of March Tips
There were five Monday’s in the month of March. This means five weeks of trading and 25 tips, most of which were for weekly expiration. Two tips had monthly expiration which included with the last week of tips makes for 7 open trades at the end of the month. I will be honest and tell you that the last week of March was really sucky. The near 30 point sell off in the S&P on the first Friday of April caused all five of those trades to close in the red. More about that in next month’s recap.
Week One: Russia VS. Ukraine Round 1
The first week of March was hot because of the Russian entry into the Ukraine. The markets dropped as a result and provided some good entries for binary traders. I traded a call on the S&P, fading the knee jerk reaction and profiting from it. A mirror trade on the DAX was also profitable. Gold was also affected and my trade on that was also profitable as were my trades on the USD/JPY and the crude oil ETF USO. The political situation with Russia and the Ukraine was an easy event to take advantage of.
Week Two: Cool Reaction
This week saw the major U.S. indices crest a near term wave of economic data, not to mention that the Crimea was still a hot bed. I traded a put on my near term signal and profited on it. This trade will help to boost both my puts and my calls ratios, I won the put and didn’t lose the call. I also traded a call on the USD/JPY that failed as the pair was met by resistance. I want to point out that through my own fault I accidentally made this trade 4 times in my account resulting in 4 of my losses. Discounting that fact I could say that 30 trades closed in the month, 22 winners with a 73.3% profitability but I won’t, I made a mistake and I have to live with it. A call on gold was profitable, I made this trade because the Crimea flight to safety trade had momentum on the rise. A trade on Oil failed too but the last trade, a call on JP Morgan, is still open and currently in the money as it had a one month expiry.
Week Three and Four :Russia VS. Ukraine Round 2!
The third week of March was another one affected by Vladimir Putin and his invasion of Crimea. The international stock markets held steady that week but did not move up in time for my call on the SPX to finish in the money. That was my only losing trade for this week. A put on gold, from the $1380 levels with a one month expiry is firmly in the money. A call on the DAX closed in the money as did my calls on the oil ETF and the usd/jpy. The flight to safety/Crimea trade worked here where it did not work in the SPX.
The fourth week of the month was another good one for me. The political situation in the Crimea had settled down, the FOMC had their meeting and the data was rolling in OK so the long term trends were able to take over. I traded calls on the SPX, usd/jpy, Apple and the USO. I traded a put on Gold. All were profitable.
Week Five: Good Ending (at least on my case…)
As I mentioned before week Five was pretty sucky. The week ended on Monday, just after I made my trades. The week was full of the monthly data and the data was all good. Even the NFP was strong, just not as strong as thought. Or maybe traders were eyeing the upcoming earnings season. Or it was just time to take profits I don’t know but the sell off on Friday put all five of these trades in the red and they have all closed out of the money since. I traded calls on the SPX, USO, usd/jpy, DAX and a put on gold.