Tradesight has been providing stock calls daily since 2002. We post the results of our of our trades, winners and losers, in our reports and Market Blog every day. Some people might find it surprising to learn that while we track our Futures and Forex formal trade call results monthly, we don’t post anything beyond the trade reviews on our Stocks calls.

There is actually a very specific reason for this. I’ve never been a fan of trying to “hype” or “promote” something. Being profitable in trading is about learning what to do and getting yourself to make the right decisions. In Futures as well as in Forex, if we publish a call in advance, just about everyone should get the same fills and be able to get in and out at almost the same numbers. That isn’t always the case in stocks. It depends on how many shares you are trading and what the liquidity in the market for that stock is at the time. For that reason, I have already been hesitant to say “These are the exact results.” I would never want to try to suggest that someone would make a certain amount of dollars trading a certain number of shares or make a certain percentage. If I take a trade and sell it for a $0.30 gain, it makes a big statistical difference if someone else had to pay $0.05 more to get in and maybe got out for $0.02 less. That’s $0.23 instead of $0.30 even though the concept of the trade was fine.

However, after many requests, in October 2015, we started posting our results. You can see these monthly here.

In our system, you can basically break trades down into four categories: Big losers, small losers, small winners, and big winners.

In order to have any chance of succeeding in the markets, you have to have a system. There is no other way around it. I’ve been trading for 20 years now, and I’ve trained over 1000 people. You don’t make money if you don’t have a technically valid system for entry and exits.

Of the four categories of trades listed above, we simply don’t allow any of the first category, which is big losers. We always have a worst-case stop and we always stick to it. There should never be a scenario where you are still in a trade that is causing a significant loss if you follow our rules.

In terms of the other three categories, generally speaking, if you have about a third of your trades fall into each category, you should be making good money. In other words, if we have about 33% of our trades as small losers and 33% of trades as small winners, those basically would offset. That leaves the other 33% of so only as bigger winners, and that’s what we are here for. In our world, we count a loser as a trade that stops out (stops in our system are based on the price-level of the stock). We count a small winner as a trade that goes enough to make a partial and then either stops the second half of the trade under the entry or stops the second half of the trade slightly in the money, but no more than the partial was or so. Then the big winners are anything that keeps going beyond the partial.

So there were the results for December from last month.

Tradesight Stock Results for December 2015

Number of trade calls that triggered with market support: 115
Number (and percent of total) of small losers: 30 (26.0%)
Number (and percent of total) of small winners: 50 (43.5%)
Number (and percent of total) of big winners: 35 (30.5%)

Can that continue to hold? Here are the results for January.

Tradesight Stock Results for January 2016

Number of trade calls that triggered with market support: 143
Number (and percent of total) of small losers: 32 (22.4%)
Number (and percent of total) of small winners: 66 (46.2%)
Number (and percent of total) of big winners: 45 (31.4%)

The overall win rate is 77.6%, one of our best ever, and really no surprise given the volatility that we’ve seen in the markets to start the year. The movement and ranges were above normal for a January. The number of trades that triggered was also up due to the moves. Nothing to complain about to start the year. The middle category of small winners outsized the others, but with the losers down to their lowest percentage we’ve seen (22.4%), it’s all good. This is just one example of how to put together a solid month.