StockTwits User Profile: w0nk0
hallo StockTwits, below is a profile of one of our very own:
He hails from Germany, plays the electric guitar, has sworn off the media and has been tweeting his trades since before StockTwits existed. The market first piqued his interest as a result of the press coverage of the ‘87 crash and he has followed it ever since. His schooling is in Psychology and he started honing his trading skills as a Deputy Specialist on the Frankfurt exchange floor. Though, outside of some financial IT consulting work, he has made his living almost exclusively as a trader since 2003.
@w0nk0 mainly swing trades liquid U.S. stocks across all caps (the majority of German equities aren’t sufficiently liquid). His typical holding period is for 2-4 days but he will occasionally hold for a position for a few hours or even a month or so.
@w0nk0 uses history to vet his trading ideas: his strictly system-based trading strategy can be summed in one word - backtesting. His portfolio of ~20 backtest-based models scan all sufficiently-liquid U.S. stocks at the end of each trading day. From then, his trades are purely technology-based; 99% of his trades originate from his models and are sent to his broker via an API. His market knowledge comes from observing market behavior to generate ideas and then backtesting against his models.
Outside of trading, our man enjoys real-time strategy (RTS) games, poker and listening to and playing music. (He’s a strategy machine, seriously)
@w0nk0 words of advice to new traders:
“Whenever you have a strategy, think about what edge you have. A trade that is too easy to put on will probably not work, you need something that is hard to think of or to execute!”
And his thoughts on StockTwits:
“Twitter and StockTwits have turned my lonely one-guy-with-a-lot-of-screens trading operation into a busy office with loose contacts all over the world. It changed my life, and I love it with a passion!”
