My 1st Million At 33 – yes, you can do it too

Things are changing extremely fast.  If you just look at my posts for one day, I flip-floped a couple of times.  When I backed out yesterday, I backed out right at the bounce up of gold spot at about $572, near 12:20am New York Time.  With further free fall later, I decided to put in my orders in the last hour.

Trading in the last hour, I saw something interesting.  There were people bottom-fishing like me from about 2:30pm to 3:20pm.  And then in the last half-hour, as I have suspected, some desperate orders came in and sold right into closing, and I picked some from their hands.

Overnight market, I had suspected that Asia may plunge to $540ish in panic.  But this price probably will not be available in US (we shall still see yet), if my game plan works out correctly.  My assumption was that an overnight plunging in gold spot will create enough panic, but still will not destroy ^HUI and ^XAU closing prices at US, and keep them at above the bull trends.
I don’t think US market will see 540ish today.  Maybe 560ish, or high 550.  I hope that if we do see 540ish this week (or possibly anytime before Jun 28/29, next Fed meeting), it will have a very strong bounce-up, and also both ^HUI and ^XAU will have strong divergence in terms of $GOLD:$HUI ratio, but may not on an absolute price basis.

I will be bottom-fishing again probably today and this week.  But as I have said, I may pull out all of my purchases yesterday if I suspect that things are not going in the way that I expect them to be.  I won’t be able to give out any notices for my trades because time is extremely precious.  In fact, when I backed out my trade, there was ONLY ONE or TWO MINUTES window during which I could back out with a low $100 profit.  I used to daytrade back in 1999/2000, so I’m fairly familiar with how to trade in SECONDS.  And unfortunately even if I post my moves realtime, you will be left in the dust for sure.  The window of opportunities is most of the time just 1 or 2 minutes for the best prices in a given 15 minute window (whether it’s buy/sell).  If you don’t catch it, it’s gone, and may not come back for a long while.

Yesterday’s trading for me was an eye-opener.  For the first time, I was trading out of my accounts at Scottrade, Ameritrade, and FirsTrade simultaneously.  And because I couldn’t have multiple logins into two of my FirsTrade accounts, I had to place orders, logged out one account, and logged in into another account.  It took almost 1 entire hour for me to pick up all the my intended amount for investment (because I seldom use market orders).  I didn’t get some companies, and had to resort to other companies, simply because I was too busy trading in other accounts, and missed the window of opportunity.  And one company, I picked up at a slightly higher price than I would like, so I only put in about half of the purchase size.  I prepare to average down for the other half, today for in the future, if it goes lower today.

Also, I noticed one thing about trading speeds yesterday.  FirsTrade was a little slow in its orders going into the market.  I think it’s slower by about 10 seconds or so, compared to Ameritrade.  How did I notice that?  Because I should have got my fill of the shares when I entered the order on my screen, hitting right at the bids, but I didn’t get it.  Instead, prices moved higher, and I missed what I wanted because I think FirsTrade was slower by about 10 seconds.  Maybe I am wrong.  I didn’t put the streamer from Ameritrade up on my screen.  I should have.  We shall see.  In any case, executions done at FirsTrade were good.  When my limit order prices were higher than the actual market bids, I was filled with the lower prices from seller’s ask price instead.  That was pretty good.  In one case, I got filled at $7.32 when my limit order was at $7.60.  That’s a saving of almost 4%.  I know this to be also true at Datek (acquired by Ameritrade later).  And I know this WON’T happens at Scottrade from my experiences.  What Scottrade does when your ask price is higher than the bid price, is that Scottrade will swallow your order first, and immediately sell to the bidder for a profit.  I may be wrong again, but at least that’s what I saw on my Scottrade screen in the past.

Alright, now it’s 5am.  Not sure if I shall go back to sleep, or wait for the market to open at 6:30am.  Gold spot is now at $565.60, slightly higher than NY yesterday’s closing price.  I still believe that today gold spot will go up in NY.  But for Thursday, and especially Friday, I’m not sure at this point.  Anyway, lower prices are welcomed.  I’m standing right under the golden tree, waiting for the golden apples to drop down so that I can catch them.  I still got quite a lot of buckets to be filled.  But I won’t be climbing up to pick those apples.  The ones that are ripe could fall into my buckets.  Picking up unripe apples will taste sour rather than sweet.  (Oh, but if the market goes into a clear rally mode, you should start banging on the tree for more apples.  Except that I’m afraid that there may be another low near term, and another low intermediate term.  Those lows can be higher or lower than this current low that is coming to be formed.  )

Best luck trading.  Don’t lose your shirts.