- Are Any Grains Worth Buying At These Prices?
- US Government Continues to Print Money at Breathtaking Pace
- Food Supply Problem More Acute Than Ever
- Jim Rogers: Dollar Will Be Devalued; Buy Commodities
- Casey Research: Get Ready for the Commodity Comeback
A review of my futures trades from the previous week:
- Went long cotton. Cotton futures are the most attractive investment opportunity I see today. They are actually trading below the prices they were at when the entire bull market in commodities began.
Other existing positions I've got:
- Short the British Pound - Last time I shorted the British Pound, it turned out to be a quite profitable trade. I plan to hold this position until the GBP hits a 15-day high against the US dollar.
My wish list...and it looks like these commodities are at least starting to form a bottom, at last:
- Sugar
- Coffee
- Natural Gas
- Silver
Open positions
| Date | Position | Qty | Month/Yr | Contract | Entry Price | Last Price | Profit/Loss |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10/10/08 | Short | 1 | DEC 08 | British Pound | 1.6870 | 1.5371 | $9,368.75 |
| 11/26/08 | Long | 1 | MAR 09 | Cotton | 46.42 | 48.00 | $790.00 |
| Net Profit/Loss On Open Positions | $10,158.75 | ||||||
Account Balances
| Current Cash Balance | $39,577.74 |
| Open Trade Equity | $10,158.75 |
| Total Equity | $49,736.49 |
| Long Option Value | $0.00 |
| Short Option Value | $0.00 |
| Net Liquidating Value | $49,736.49 |
Cashed out: $20,000.00
Total value: $69,736.49
Weekly return: -4.1%
YTD return: -9.4%
***"Cash out" mostly means taxes, but lately I've also been using it for living expenses, and also to finance a cool new time management software startup that is starting to lift off.
4 comments:
Hi Brett,
on what do you base your entries and exits? Do you use programmed algorithms or just intuition, or both? Have a profitable speculation.
Hi, thanks for your comment.
I typically enter long positions on 20-day highs, and exit on 15-day lows. With the reverse guidelines for short positions.
Pretty simple, but it'd worked pretty well for me, and I get in the most trouble when I ignore these simple rules.
Here's a previous post I wrote about entries and exits after reading Winner Take All: http://commoditybullmarket.blogspot.com/2007/12/weekly-positions-update-121607.html
Brett:
How much leverage is required when trading currency positions? Also, have you traded currencies that are not Dollar based? For example, shorting a british pound against a Norwegian krone?
John, I usually try to have $15-20K of cash for every currency contract, at a minimum.
I believe you can get > 10:1 leverage with currency contracts, so it's easy to leverage too high - which I've personally done.
Have only traded $-based contracts personally.
Post a Comment