The Home Trading Blog

First I like to wish everyone a Happy New Year and all the best for your trading activities this year. This is always a good time to take a breather and take stock of what you have achieved in your trading (and other areas of your life) during last year. It is also the time where you need to set the goal posts for the new year. You may want to rethink your trading strategy and set clear and precise targets what you want to achieve.

Have a good look at your portfolio and set yourself a minimum dollar value of what your portfolio will be worth at the end of the year. Make sure the figure you come up with is ambitious but also realistic. Write down this figure on a piece of paper and make it your daily ritual to look at as if you have achieved this already. I write a few sentences around this and read them daily. You need to define a date and the value. And for best results write down what you feel when you have achieved this.

Here is an example: It is the 23^rd of December 2011 and I am looking at my share portfolio for the margin lending account.  The portfolio is worth more than 500,000 dollars. I feel fantastic and look forward spending Christmas with my family.

I like to say more than x dollars, this means I am specific on the amount but I leave room to exceed my goal. This has worked for me many times in the past. If you are not clear around goal setting, I recommend seeing a Life Coach, who can help you with this.

Enough about goal setting now back to the blog portfolio. I took a break updating the portfolio over Christmas and we haven’t missed much. Traditionally the markets are very quite during this time of year and I don’t expect much movement this week either. The Australian share market is still lagging behind some of the other major markets which all reached new highs.

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Not much happened last week in the Australian share market. The trading range for the week was very small and the market finished marginally higher than the week before. This was pretty much a reflection of the overseas markets. However we had some movement in the portfolio.

We have added JHX (James Hardie Industries) and LLC (Lend Lease Group), both finishing the week higher than the buy price. This brings our portfolio up to 20 stocks again. Not for long, as I have identified TOL (Toll Holdings) having two closes below the uptrend band. I expect a small loss on Monday as TOL is currently down almost 2%. I couldn’t see any new buys for the week, but I still have JHX, LLC and QBE fulfilling the buy rules according to the HSC. Read more…

Again the web portfolio goes hand in hand with the XJO (Aussie 200 index) and finished almost unchanged. The index finished the week just 7 points higher than the week before. Looking at the portfolio we were up by .01%. The big winners for the week were all the mining stocks with the  retailers being on the other end and finishing the week lower.

Looking ahead to next week I still have CWN, TOL and WOR fulfilling all the buy criteria according to the HSC. I also have AMP (AMP Ltd), MAP (MAP Group) and SUN (Suncorp Metway) joining the list of buys. Still no stocks that are giving me a new sell signal, although OST (OneSteel) is moving very close to my sell stop and I will be monitoring the stock very closely next week.

I had an interesting conversation with a colleague of mine last week. He gave me a list of 12 stock symbols, that he sees as an opportunity, and asked me about my opinion of them. Most of the symbols were from the Australian Stock Exchange but a few were from the New York Stock Exchange. I looked at them applying the HSC rules and none of the stocks that he mentioned were anywhere near of setting a buy signal (according to the rules that I follow).

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Just as you think you have it all figured out, the market proves that anything is possible. I am referring to last week’s post, where I mentioned the bearish bar and expected the market to continue to fall. Well the XJO had a good week and equalled the high of the week before finishing the week stronger compared to the previous close. I still think we will see another decline as part of the final decline of the 19 week cycle. Time will tell.

In line with the XJO, the blog portfolio posted another strong week with the profit of our open positions up to 4.86%. There were no further additions to the portfolio because we have reached our maximum number of 20 positions in the portfolio. For the week ahead I have identified several buys. All of them have been buys in the last couple of weeks. They are CWN, ERA, LEI, TOL, WAN, WOR and WPL. Read more…

The XJO (Aussie 200) has broken through the trading range I mentioned last week and finished the week at 4640. With the international markets finishing higher as well, it looks more and more likely that we are in for a nice rally towards Christmas. Having said this one of things I have learned reading “Trading in the Zone” by Mark Douglas, is that everything is possible in the markets. It all comes down to probabilities and at the moment the probability of a rally is higher than the chances of another steep drop.

Our portfolio profit for the open positions rose from 3.08% to 4.87% with only 6 positions in the red.  Other than that there was no movement in the portfolio as we have reached our maximum of 20 open positions. Technically there is one new buy for the week. I have CPA (Commonwealth PPTY Office FD) fulfilling the rules according to the HSC. However I consider the stock to be in a sideways movement and therefore having limited profit potential. Read more…

I feel like I sound like a broken record, but once again, there was very little movement in the markets last week. There was very little change in the Australian market, with the close on Friday just being a few points higher than the week before. Most interestingly though the XAO stayed in the trading range that I mentioned last week. The high in the XAO was 4598, which is the same than in the week ending 17^th August. The other high in this range was on 25^th June with 4622. If this level gets broken, we can expect a rally up. On the other hand if the resistance level stays intact, we can expect a 300 point drop over the next three to four weeks.

The blog portfolio finished the week marginally lower than the week before. There were no buying or selling transactions as we have reached 20 stocks in the portfolio. Having said this, I have found 12 stocks meeting the buy criteria according to the HSC. I have BLD (Boral Limited), BOQ (Bank of Queensland), GFF (Goodman Fielder Limited), LLC (Lend Lease), MAP (Map Group) and WOR (Worleyparsons Ltd) joining the list of buys for the week. Additional I still have AWC, BEN, BXB, LEI, SUN and TOL meeting all the rules.

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