Just let go

Hey Guys,

guess you are surprised to hear from me again. Well, I could explain why, who, where, blabla but I don't think anybody really wants to hear the whole story.
So rather than bothering you with my life, I wanted to share an experience with you that is not solely business related, but may also help you in other situations.
This exactly brings to an important point about future posts: The Blog's name has changed to "indie guide to everything" (until I come up with something better) because I wanted to share all life experiences, tools and strategies with you - not only how to make money (although this will still be the hidden focus), but everything that comes to my mind to improve everyday-life itself.

With this in mind, I want to share a really good exercise with you:
Most projects I had in mind failed (whether business or personal!) because I just was not willing to adapt to change - like some other people, I am a real comfy fellow: I don't like when things change. As soon as a bookmarked website changes design, I get upset knowing I have to relocate all the buttons and sites I used to browse through on a daily basis. Or when my supermarket decides to move the candy department somewhere else... I could go on like this forever.
Anyway, the important part is: Each and everyday things around you change. Adapting to change fast is an essential skill in our world today, but just like you can't learn to be spontaneous over night, learning to deal with change also needs some exercise to get good at it.

So I came up with an idea to practice the whole change process:
Take a couple of moments and just look around you. If your place looks anything like my place you should have noticed a wide range of items. Just to give you an impression I briefly share with you what I saw:
Here's a telephone, a scanner, on the wall is an old movie poster, a stepper I barely ever used, a bass guitar, shoes books, old magazines, a bag of tea (really don't know why that's not in the kitchen) and some other creepy stuff, I don't want to name on the internet.
From now on start picking an item you own on a daily basis and just get rid of it - throw away old magazines, sell stuff on ebay, make a gift to someone who actually uses that item.
Again, if you're like me, you have real difficulties letting things go - so by forcing yourself to get rid of everything you don't really need (but still keep for reasons you can hardly name) you will be dealing with change everyday.
And plus points: you can make some extra bucks on ebay and you will be able to focus easier when there is no useless item around to distract you.

I hope some of you will join me and get rid of some things.
Some side information: The first item I got rid of today was an old calendar that still hung on my wall - the year was 2002, and no, this is not a joke.

So long,
take care guys!

BASF sold - other stocks gone wild!

Howdy Partners!
So again, I have to excuse, cause I'm really not that much of a reliable blogger these days - I somehow can't manage to write something about my portfolio!
Anyways, just to keep you updated: I sold BASF last week for 47,10 - a peek point they did not reach again up to date (lucky me).
DIC Asset is finally beginning reduce its losses and Wirecard (a company I still don't know too much about) keeps making good profits (see the picture above).
However, I am a bit disappointed that the DAX keeps defending its position, and since I'm short it sucks :(

Enough of my portfolio stuff, I wanted to share something else with you guys:
When I began trading I had the stupid thought of selling a stock at the intraday peak point.
For example, if you take Wirecard, I would have written a sell order with a limit that would maybe be 7,90 when the stock was currently selling for 7,80 or something. I thought it would be pretty smart to abuse intraday peak points, meaning that I just would sell the stock with a limit hoping that through the day the stock would rise to that point for maybe just a second and then sell at the highest possible price. Why is that stupid you ask?
Easy: By doing so, I did sell sometimes at pretty good prices, but afterall I lost more money because I lost the rest of the rise! So what I mostly do now is that I sell with a stop-loss-limit:
When the stock falls to a specified value (that's the stop) a selling order is being generated so I cut my losses (that's the loss) but still I sell with a limit then. For example today after wirecard made 2% I secured my win with the following order:

Stop-loss-limit
Stop: 7,40
Limit: 7,45
(The stock was selling for 7,52 or something at that time)
-> By the time the stock would fall under 7,40 a sell order would be generated with the limit to sell at minimum 7,45 (this is because sometimes when a stock falls it creates a certain bounce back effect meaning that people buy because the price is low). By doing this I could go all the way up without the fear of maybe losing all my winnings. Pretty cool, huh?

I can only recommend to trade like this, so you are more or less safe that you don't loose much and can participate in the whole rise of your stock. One last trading reminder: Don't forget to update you securing orders once a day (I had to learn this the hard way...)!

Sale ;)

I kinda felt like it was Sale the other day, so I hooked myself up with some financial assets.
For one, I bought Wirecard. Actually, I don't really know what they really do (which, trust me, is sometimes the best) but recently they lost over 30% in a day due to market rumors that to be false. So if this is true, and I highly hope so, I have bought their stocks with a nice discount. You see - pure speculation.
Then I was looking at the DAX and I thought to myself: Holy Crap! The last time the DAX reached that level was shortly before the whole Lehman desaster (remember?) - perfect time to go short !
In financial terms you usually go "long", meaning that you hold common stocks in your portfolio and if they increase in value you profit from that.
If you go short, well, it's like a bet: You bet that the stocks are about to fall in price, so you participate from their losses.
I have just bought an ETF (exchange traded fund - you can buy this one at regular stock markets) that does exactly that: If the DAX falls 1% I make 1% profit (not exactly, but it works roughly like that) - pretty cool huh? :)

Anyway, now that I'm almost fully invested I think I might have some trouble sleeping at night. But that's the whole beauty of gambling, isn't it?

Long time no trade

So dear readers,

I was pretty lazy over the past two weeks due to two reasons:
First, I just started a new job, which basically took away all of my time and second, well almost nothing happened.

So what did happen?
As you see my portfolio has decreased and I am currently in the red zone.
How come? Well for one thing, I have sold my Fiat stocks (it was more of an automatic limit sell, but well whatever) and made some 100 Bucks or so and as you can see I have something in my portfolio that has no value.
What's that? These are options on new stock. DIC Asset AG decided that it would be kinda cool to issue more stocks. Firms do this either because they need money, or like in this case, because they think in the near future the time is right to purchase a couple of objects and therefore put money aside.
So what happens when a company issues new stocks? First of all, the stock price falls dramatically, because now there are more shares and this means that all money that is earned has to be split among more shareholders. In a nutshell: your piece of the cake gets smaller.
But there is a certain law that provides shareholders from being ripped off:
If new shares are issued only the old shareholders have the right to buy them. Often enough new stocks are issued well below the current market price, and so you can either buy the stocks or you can sell your right to buy new stocks to someone who wants to.
As I do not want to reinvest in that company, I will choose to sell my right tomorrow hence generating an instant cash flow of something between 40 and 60 €.

In the end this means that I am not really losing money, although the picture above tells something else ;)

Keep reading cause these days could be somewhat exciting in terms of stock trading!

Update Update!

So folks,
yesterday was kind of a big day for my whole portfolio.

1. I sold Solarworld after the stock rocketed upwards to 11€, leaving me with 3% profit (the day before I had a 5% loss - lucky me ! )

2. I bought BASF (Goldman Sachs Conviction - you know you want it!) and DIC Asset AG, which is a real estate company mainly for office buildings. I always wanted to invest in real estate and that company seemed great. Well, doesn't pay out yet (see the table above), but after I saw Solarworld rise and fall (or in that case rather fall and rise) I believe in every stock.

3. As you can see, my Fiat stocks did a pretty good job for the whole portfolio performance.
After all, this leaves me with 2% overall performance, which for the time being is terrific, really.


I got some money left, and I'm thinking about hedging my portfolio with some short option. The DAX looks pretty overbought as a whole, but it's not that clear. Hmm...
Stay tuned !

Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose

I did it again.
It's like, when you want to quit smoking. You remember all bad things about it and tell yourself, it's one of stupidiest things you've ever done. And then you do it again. Maybe not immediately, but at some point you always do it again. Afterwards you feel miserable, and tell yourself that now you really quit.
I've been having the same hard feelings with tech stocks. You have know, that when I was 11 I put my whole money (confirmation money, mostly) in a tech fund. A year or so later, the Internet-Tech bubble burst, and I lost a fortune.
At that point I swore myself never to buy tech stocks again - and now? Damn, yesterday I bought Solarworld. I'm almost crying right now, because it was one of the worst decisions I made - ever!
At this point (a day later) I already lost 5%, which would be most of the profit the peugeot trade made. Life's tough. Trading, too.
I wouldn't recommend buying that shitty Solarworld stock. I don't know, why I did it, honestly. I was influenced or under the influence or something like that.

However, I did make a trade which is maybe worthwhile - bought myself a share in Fiat (for some reasons I dig car manufacturers now).
Why? Easy - Goldman Sucks said "Conviction Buy" so I bought. Although most Analysts don't know a thing about stocks (read City Boy and you'll understand) these guys really know when to buy. Every time a Goldman says buy, you better buy - trust me they know game.

That's it for today - I will retreat now and cry about the stupidity of the Solarworld trade.
Never ever am I buying stupid tech stocks again...

Bye Bye Peugeot

By now I have sold Peugeot again. With more than 7% return in 3 days I thought it's better to secure what I got so far.
And here comes a very important fact about trading: It's almost impossible to buy at the cheapest possible price and sell at the highest. Trust me - been there, done that (or rather tried that).
As I follow how the stock went I see that I could have sold it for even more than I got, but hey that's trading. As long as you go out with a profit, you've done everything right.
Besides 7% in 3 days? Put that in your pipe and smoke it, dear fund managers!

However, this does leave me with another problem: Where to invest now!?
Hmm...