Aspire to Inspire

I've been fiddling with my investment portfolio recently which saw me selling off some of my SG holdings. Some dough has been placed into SSB and we decided to give the Perennial Real Estate Holdings retail bond a miss since we have some exposure to them. I'm trying to figure out whether I can shorten my trading timeframe from a few days to just a day and maybe even intra-day which I target to do in a few years time. 

I've also been testing out my new trading strategy and so far the picks have been right such that I can exit the next day with a nice profit. I think I'll continue to put this on trial before I officially start as "churning" my trades with just a one day time frame works nicely for me.

It's not that swing trading doesn't work for me but sometimes I do get kinda caught in trying to short and long or long and short the same stock which usually takes more than the couple of days if I want to maximise my profits. It would require me to exit first and then enter later on, it can't be done in the same trade although that would save me commission. 

I prefer a cleaner method of a one day turnaround which would mean less attachment and less worries once the market closes. I would also have sufficient funds in the account to place new trades rather than panicking when I get email warnings that my margin cushion is declining. Strangely this hit me badly the first few times but then I got over it and manage my trades much better from then on.

A one day trade becomes important when the market snaps in gear due to news such as the recent ECB announcement of further stimulus as well as China cutting rates. Which means that by right the stocks that are supposed to go down will just rally up for a couple of days at least before they resumed their normal path.

Thus I can either cut my losses or hold on till they go down but to hold on means that I should never be fully vested if not I could get a margin call. Either I'm crazy which I think I am by trying to do this or it could be because we could potentially lose some serious money in an investment gone bad that we have to get this right or else our lifestyles have to change drastically.

Fear such as losing the roof over your head while you have no money in your account and children to feed can be extremely motivating such that you become a millionaire many times over. It is like staring death in the face and you can't shrink in fear but man up and strive to get yourself out of the hell hole asap. Success would mean wonderful stories that you can share with your children and grandchildren which would make their eyes pop and go Ahhh in wonder. Now aspiring to share such an inspiring story in the future. 

Comments

  1. Singapore Man of LeisureOctober 25, 2015 at 10:04 PM

    Joyce,

    The shorter the time frames, the more important the tools of the trade - namely the platform and speed in execution needed ;)

    If you do intraday trades, no retail platforms and delayed prices OK?

    I had the good fortune to have an evening with a senior professional trader and he was laughing at some of the tools used by retail...

    He is paying a few thousand dollars a month to have access to the top-of-the-line platform from a US vendor instead of using the "free" professional platforms offered by his broker.

    He told me as a scalper, you needed all the "edge" he could get ;)

    Of course he reassured me if I position and swing traded, retail platforms are OK since speed is not an issue. Phew!

    LOL!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Joyce LeongOctober 25, 2015 at 10:23 PM

      Hi SMOL,

      I'm not ready for intra day trading yet...currently no more delayed prices for me...I subscribed to live prices a while ago...it's something I'm working towards :)

      Thanks for telling me the upfront fees I've to fork out to get the edge! I read that the connection time is impt as a scalper so the upfront fees is to Ensure there's no time lag...

      Delete

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