The Home Trading Blog

Welcome to another one of my blog updates. It is getting more challenging for me to find the time going through the ASX 100 stocks and to update the portfolio over the weekend. As many of you are aware I have started trading Forex on an intraday basis during the week. This for me is enough looking at charts and I like to spend the weekends with my young family.

I have decided to stop the weekend HSC updates and start posting charts of some of my Forex trades I have taken during the week. I think this blog showed that the method taught by the Home Study Course is indeed profitable. However in times of sideways moving markets it will give more entries (than in an upward trending market) that result in a loss. Personally I believe in times like this it is best to sit on the sidelines, use smaller position sizes or look for different charting techniques and shorter timeframes. The challenge here is that you will miss the point when the market starts trending up again.

I will however continue to report on the current positions in the portfolio. As I am using NinjaTrader for my intraday charting I have also decided not to renew my Market Analyst subscription and have to base my exit criteria on trendlines rather than the trendband. I have found that when it comes to intraday charts NinjaTrader is much more responsive and reliable than Market Analyst. The only downside is that it is lacking some of the Home Study Course tools like trendbands or Gann swing charts.

There are a number of stocks that I have added to the portfolio since the last update. They are ANZ, BOQ, ORI, WES and WPL. I also closed the position in TEL as it had two closes below the uptrend band. The transactions were:

17th October: Buy 472 ANZ at 21.20
17th October: Buy 1250 BOQ at 8.00
17th October: Buy 401 ORI at 24.93
17th October: Buy 313 WES at 32.00
17th October: Buy 281 WPL at 35.65
28th October: Sell 5848 TEL at 2.00 for a profit of 16%

Before I finish this post a big thank you to my readers out there for your support and your comments. As I said I will continue the blog, just in a different format.

This leaves the portfolio as follows:

Welcome again to my weekly update. The Australian market made a new low on Tuesday, but has since recovered most of the losses the week before. Looking at the XJO daily bar chart, there is a nice reversal bar for Tuesday (it actually recovered al l of the losses of the day), which could indicate we indeed have found the end (and bottom) for the current cycle. Still if the US fails to come to an agreement on lifting the debt ceiling we could be in for a nasty surprise. Whilst it is looking up, it is too early to celebrate.

Our open positions are gaining momentum as well, with the unrealized profit up from 15.12% to 19.38% without adding or selling any stocks. It has been a quiet week and I couldn’t identify any additional stocks meeting the buy criteria for next week. However I have a number of stocks which I will watch closely next week as they might meet all the rules next week.

I have also noticed IOF (Investa Office Fund) having two closes below the uptrend band, hence meeting the sell rules if you have bought the stock following the HSC rules. I’ll be also watching for a possible add position of one of our latest additions TEL (Telecom Corporation of New Zealand Limited). TEL had a big rise last week and is up to almost 24%.

With no buy or sell transactions for last week, here is the portfolio as of Friday 22nd July 2011:

Sell, sell, sell, this is the motto for the week ahead. I have identified 3 stocks that are currently in the portfolio that have two closed below the uptrend band this week, making it a sell. They are NAB (National Australia Bank), TSE (Transfield Services Ltd) and WBC (WestPac Banking). And the way it looks none of them will return us a profit. On a quick scan I have also identified a further two stocks with two closes below that are not part of the blog portfolio. They are CGF (Challenger Limited) and COH (Cochlear Ltd).

This combined the a Bearish Outside Vertical in the overseas markets, point to a further downward move in the week(s) ahead (if this week’s low will be taken out). I just hope this sideways movement in the Australian movement will come to an end soon and we will see the HSC perform better in a trending market.

I still have a couple of stocks that meet all the buy criteria according to the Home Study Course. They are: DOW, TEL, TLS and WOW. Fingers cross the keep their strength for the next weeks.

Read more…

Oh No! the blog portfolio’s profit of current positions is down to 10% again. When you first look at this it does not read very well. Whilst the Australian share index finished the week marginally lower, the portfolios profit is down from 14%. Nothing to worry about though as we were adding 3 more positions and you expect the profit to fall then, as it is unlikely their profit is up to 14% in the first week.

As mentioned last week DOW (Downer EDI Ltd), TEL (Telecom Corporation of New Zealand) and WOW (Woolworths Ltd) all three met the buy criteria according to the Home Study Course. Their buy price this week stayed under 33%. I am already looking forward for them to return some healthy profits to the portfolio.

Apart from the new additions I still have CPA, SKI (below 1.234), TLS and TSE meeting the buy criteria based on my interpretation of the HSC. I didn’t identify any new sells this week. There is a good chance I missed something, because I was redoing my workbook after attending David’s refresher webinar on the HSC. I liked his tips how to setup Market Analyst. But this means I lost some of my old trendbands on the charts and I need to go through them again in greater detail.

Read more…

The Australian share market finished the week slightly higher than the week before, whilst the blog portfolio moved marginally lower. This is to be expected when adding new stocks to the portfolio. Last week we added TLS (Telstra Corp Ltd), which finished the week 2% up compared to the opening price on Monday. Apart from this there wasn’t much movement in the portfolio.

Looking forward to Monday, I have a number of stocks fulfilling all the buy criteria according to the Home Study Course. They are DOW (Downer EDI Ltd) (under 3.92), TEL (Telecom Corporation of New Zealand) (under 1.74) and WOW (Woolworths Ltd) (under 27.33). This is interesting that all three are close to the 33% price extension and are only a buy if they open or move below the 33%. I also still have CPA, GPT, SKI, TLS and TSE meeting the rules. I didn’t identify any stocks meeting the sell rules. Read more…

What a week, which ended with a big bang. I am lost for words to see the devastation caused by the earthquake and the following tsunami in Japan. My thoughts are with the people in Japan as mother nature has shown her destructive power once again. I just hope that the horror stories are stopping and we hear more about miraculous survival stories.

Before the earthquake we have seen five days in the red for the Australian share market causing the Aussie 200 index to drop by around 5%. I have mentioned this before we are getting closer towards the end of 53 week cycle in the index and you usually expect a big drop like this and I expect the market to drop below 4600 points (the close of Friday was 4644). However there is also the chance that this decline simply marks the end of the current 19 week cycle and the market will recover before a steep decline towards the middle of the year. Whilst this doesn’t help us much I suggest you stick by your rules and buy and sell accordingly. You will always find opportunities coming your way.

Having said this, I recommend that you take a break of 1 or 2 months if you encounter a string of losses in your trades. This can hurt not only your physical bank balance but also your emotional bank balance. In order to trade successfully you need to be in the right frame of mind. Take this time to backtest and polish up your skills. Then start trading again.

Read more…