Closed Trades : ARG & VRT

System Status - Off

The Australian All Ordinaries index has fallen over 7% in practically a straight line since early November.  As a result the trades keep hitting their stops rather than profit targets.  It's not particularly pleasant but this part of the trading cycle is about capital preservation rather than piling up profits.

ARG went from a decent start to just meandering sideways for quite a while.  By the time the stop was hit the cost of carry practically chewed up the profit in the trade so even though it was marginally up it was a scratch

Courtesy of www.IncredibleCharts.com

 VRT falls into the category of "damned if you do and damned if you don't".  I use a hard stop in all my trades to keep the amount of margin used in check and to provide disaster cover should a black swan fly in.  For the stop to be meaningful in any way it has to be close enough to protect capital but ideally never be tagged under normal trading conditions.  Unfortunately VRT tagged the hard stop causing just over 1R of loss in what had been a reasonably good trade under present market conditions.

Courtesy of www.IncredibleCharts.com

I have only 4 trades currently open and even they are only hanging on by the skin of their teeth.  It's about now that one starts hoping for the Santa Rally