For years, we have all seen advertisements on TV and in the newspapers telling us to buy gold. We’ve been told that it is a safe investment. For the past 12 years, for the most part, it has been, depending on how deep your pockets are. However, we saw on Friday, April 12th, that gold, at any given moment, can turn and drop fast and hard – just like all markets. Continue reading
In the late 1980’s, my venture into the trading world began in the Gold pit on COMEX. The first day was the Friday before Memorial Day weekend. I walked in and noticed that being in the pit with a badge on was very different from stepping into it as a clerk to give your broker his position. With my heart beating out of my chest, I made my first trade. I bought one contract (100 oz.) and sold it a dime higher. I made $10. After commission, it was about $8. I realized that, during the broker training practice sessions, everyone was a hero. Once you had real money on the line, trading was decidedly different. Continue reading
This goes for the all types of traders, from the smallest to the largest. Once a position is established long or short, it’s best to test and test often. Let’s go with the long position for this example. Looking at the recent move in Facebook, let’s say that Trader one is a short-term day trader who likes to be flat by the end of the day, so he/she buys 500 Facebook shares at $27.75. The stock moves to $28. I would suggest testing the market by selling just 100 shares at $28.
As President of Sterling Commodities, part of our risk management for the Clearinghouse was to go over all of the traders accounts every night. We needed to watch and analyze their trading patterns so that we could tell when it was time to talk to a trader and tell them to pull back or even take a few days off to regroup. We were able to tell when traders were about to move to the next level of trading – both in size of positions and risk tolerance – and then give them guidance. We helped them move to the next level. Continue reading
Now what is next . . . Continue reading