Trading With The Geek December Recap. Trading Sucked!
Trading With The Geek December Recap –Trading Sucked This Month
The Geek’s recap of December binary options trading. There wasn’t a Santa rally, global tensions erupted, the FOMC raised rates and the Geek nearly lost his shirt.
You know what they say, you can’t win them all, and that is certainly true in December. The month was fraught with mixed data, global tensions were building, oil prices were plunging, safe havens became attractive and central banks altered the fundamentals if ever so slightly. All in all it was a volatile month with assets of all classes making big swings within trading ranges, counter to underlying trends. Looking back, using a long term weekly chart, a consolidation is becoming apparent. The markets have been trending for years on post-credit-crisis stimulus, now that those fundamentals are beginning to change, and the recovery begins to mature, so too are the markets. The secular bull market is still alive and kicking, the trends and what drives the market are changing.
Total Cost Of Trading = $10,000
Total Return On Investment = $8,325
Net ROI = -16.75%
There were four Monday’s in December which means a total of 20 tips. Because of the holiday, and because of some nasty broken ribs, I did not do any trading in my CT account other than the tips. Of the 20 trades I am sad to report that only 9 came out winners. This is not great, not good, but is another sign of how well money management works. I was aware that the month was not going well, but did not realize the extent of the under-performance, and did not really care, because I am confident I won’t lose too much and that I am still profitable for the year. To put it into numbers, I was only 45% correct this month and realized a loss of -$1,675 or -16.75%.
Recap Of December Trading
There were a lot of counter-currents rippling through the market in December. We’d just come off a season of weak corporate earnings and looking ahead toward another one, oil prices were volatile and plunging, the FOMC met and raised rates, economic data was mixed, the holiday and light trading were involved and many many other concerns that basically built us up a nice wall of worry. A wall the bulls have yet to scale. In my view the fundamentals are still in place for a great, long term, raging secular bull market; in the near term we may see more sideways range bound consolidation before we see new all time highs on the US indices.
Week One, 12/7/2015
Oil prices hit new lows this week and that hurt equities. At the same time hopes were high a Santa Rally would appear, it didn’t. Regardless, the combination created a lot volatility and caused many of the assets I trade to decouple from reality. What I’m trying to say is that 3 trades failed this week; the SPX, the JPY and the EUR. Oil won, that was easy, gold won too.
Week Two, 12/14/2015
This is the week the FOMC raised interest rates for the first time in nearly a decade. The move is at once scary, they raised rates, but is also reassuring, the economy is strong enough to raise rates finally, and caused some more volatility. Adding to this was quadruple witching options expiration which causes its own brand of volatility. Surprisingly, this was my best week, I won 3 of my 5 trades including the one on Oil, the Yen and the Euro.
Week Three, 12/21/2015
Christmas week and still no Santa Rally. This was a weird week because there was not a lot of international news but there was a lot of data, and only 3 days of trading. And really light holiday trading volume. I ended up winning only 2 trades this week, the SPX and gold, losing trades on Oil, the Euro and the Yen.
Week Four, 12/28/2015
This is New Year’s week, another week of low volume and less than 5 trading days. It’s also a week in which oil prices crashed again, and tensions in the mid east began to simmer. I’ll be totally honest, this was my worst week, I lost 4 trades. I only one on gold and that may have been lucky given the circumstances. Oh well, good thing my long term win rate is still over 57%, plenty to keep my profits rising.