Donald and Dave, last one before xmas

18th Dec '20 by donald pond

11 comments 1492 reads

Friday is podcast time, lots of chat on $BTC, $CRM, $SQ, $PYPL, $PLTR, $SE, $XPEL, #BRWM, #HUR, #ITM, #CWR, #KIT, $DKNG, moving averages, being leapfrogged in tech by the developing world etc

Another chat I really enjoyed: I think we are getting much more into the flow of things and Dave has been picking some great US stocks recently.

Do listen, share and give feedback, its always nice to get comments.

The next podcast will be an end of year special, with our highlights of the year and some predictions for 2021.

All the best everyone, and if you haven't, do give us a listen.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/138...

as ever, Apple can be slow to update...https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/...

we are also on spotify, audible, and probably some others

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About the Author

Donald Pond

Premium Member

11 comments

William K

19th Dec '20

Thanks Donald and Dave. These podcasts are now part of my Saturday morning routine and I much enjoy listening to your observations, most of which tally with my own. Level 2 is useless unless you're dealing with high risk, illiquid stocks (which I avoid anyway these days). Breakout trading is full of traps for the unwary and impatient. The Santa Rally has indeed started. Baillie Gifford are perhaps the shrewdest fund managers in the UK. Copper has a great future. Etc. Etc. Keystone Investment Trust (LON:KIT) is interesting with a price of 320 pence and a NAV of 341 pence. I like the Baillie Gifford involvement, but I'm wary of the spread at around 2%. Could be an excellent long term punt though. Looking forward to your late December podcast. Next week should be fascinating.

Wayneskie

19th Dec '20

I wonder if you will be talking about $TSLA next week?

I guess 'Something' will happen one way or another!

Edinburgh Investor

19th Dec '20

Draftkings is looking really interesting given the reg environment in the US at the moment.

William K

22nd Dec '20

Palantir looks as it's about to breakout.

bennc7

22nd Dec '20

Good Morning Guys,

I decided during this year to take a hands on approach to investing myself. I have found everyday a learning curve and yesterday was no exception. I have been listening to the podcast which is really enjoyable and wondered if you could speak further during an episode in the new year on stop losses.

I know you have touched on this already, but I got caught out yesterday on easy jet (big learning curve) with such stop losses in place. Ultimately I had a stop of 790p
on easy jet. I did not lose any money and made a small amount still, but it stopped me out at 679p, yet ended the day on 759p, so still a lot of profit was left on the table.

If you can touch on the same during an episode on what would have been your strategies in both cases and how I could have avoided such a situation. Should I have top sliced along the way? removed the stop when I knew airlines where obviously going to crash on the news that came out on back of the news of countries closing their borders to the UK? I would be interested to hear what other peoples approaches would have been on this.

I am now out with a small profit, but reluctant to buy back in at 100p above (as of of today) from where I was stopped out and ironically where my stop loss was actually set in the first instance, just to rub salt into the wounds :-).

Look forward to hearing other peoples views on how they would have approached this scenario.

I am really enjoying the community of Stockopedia of which joining this platform was definitely one of my better investment decisions of 2020.

Wishing everyone a Happy Xmas and all the best for the New Year.

donald pond

23rd Dec '20

it’s really teasing us there. I thought at opening and again when it started moving late in the day it was going to break big time...

donald pond

23rd Dec '20

thanks for the feedback. Your question gets to the heart of everything. We know that the way to make money is to keep losses small and to let winners run, yet when you get volatile days where prices swing so much that is hard to do. So my approach is to basically either have quite a tight stop loss, if it is a trade that you aren’t that sure about. But I am happy to chop and change and take losses all the time. But if it is something that you have conviction in, you may want to use a manual stop. By which I mean if you put a stop into your broker it can easily be touched by the price and you end up being closed out. So with EZJ on Monday I would have probably taken the stop off if I felt there would be a short term lurch down. But ultimately, it is down to working out whether something is a trade or a long term investment (and there is a whole debate to be had about whether there is a difference and whether you should hold anything that you don’t think is about to go up), and if the latter, whether anything has changed in your investment thesis. But it is difficult when you have news and short term volatility. And in general, if you are going to use stops (and you should) there’s no point having them if you move them down when it looks like they are about to be hit. But as Ed Sekoya put it, the first rule is always to stick to the rules. And the second rule is to know when to break the first rule.

William K

23rd Dec '20

Thanks for that Donald. I think we can only conclude that the only rule about stop losses is that there are no rules. Over the last year I reckon stop losses have cost me more money than they've saved me - it's frustrating how often a stop loss can be triggered only for the stock to come back before one can react, especially when the whole market is volatile. I've now virtually stopped using automated stop losses except to lock in profits. It does make one very picky about stock picking if one trades without a safety net. And that can only be a good thing. One can of course sell at any time manually - but as we all know, that ain't easy. Even the most experienced traders suffer from loss aversion...

HumourMe

23rd Dec '20

Enjoying the podcasts. I've just caught up.

Re stop losses I'm coming round to the view of having a 'catastrophe' stop, very wide, coupled with an alert, which is the real stop. The alert is below a natural chart reaction point. It will only be actioned manually if there isn't a recovery by the close (ideally temporally close to the end of day). Next year I will see if I can live with this and largely ignore intraday movement. I don't think though that stop losses can be divorced from position sizing ... but you covered that :-)

Gag20806

29th Apr '21

Whatever happened to the Donald and Dave podcast?

donald pond

29th Apr '21

We got stopped, we were part of a chatroom and other members got edgy. Maybe one day we will return!

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Donald and Dave, last one before xmas

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Donald Pond

11 comments

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