Green And Glad

Well, the last 3 months have been a wild ride. Too wild for my taste.

8 years of trading and 2 down months. I like to make a little money everyday and minimize my losses on the down days. Every once in awhile you can have a big day. That has been my M.O. from the very beginning.

When I worked in the city other traders would have wild swings. They'd make big one day and then lose it the next. That's never been what I'm about as a trader. There were times when I wouldn't lose over $500 in a single day for months on end. That kind of consistency makes this (rather stressful) job much less stressful. But since March I have taken some big hits and the stress level went straight up. I'm hoping that it is all behind me now.

Though I doubt it is, completely.

Even days like yesterday rarely happened to me when I was "on". So I'm hoping that this summer will really see me regain my footing now that I have broken my down-month streak and that I can start to earn enough money to make this job worthwhile again.

Unfortunately, today I learned that my prop firm is passing along the NYX reg NMS fees. So that's another hurdle to overcome. I paid over $500 this month in those new fees. The more little fees they attach like that and the less sense it makes to actively daytrade because they eat directly into profit. We'll see what happens on that front. I may have to start shopping around for a new firm. I'd love to hear if other prop firms are passing these fees along. Please feel free to comment.

Anyway, my best stock of the day was DE. Here's a 2-minute graph of the stock today.


Here's some of the trades I made in DE.

9:44:48 Buy 300 @ 119.73 (300)
9:44:59 Buy 400 @ 119.75 (700)
9:45:46 Buy 100 @ 120 (800)
9:48:06 Sell 300 @ 119.94 (500)
9:50:11 Sell 100 @ 120.13 (400)
9:51:26 Buy 200 @ 119.69 (600)
9:53:53 Sell 200 @ 120.24 (400)
9:58:02 Sell 100 @ 120.60 (300)
9:59:04 Sell 100 @ 120.53 (200)
10:02:14 Sell 100 @ 120.80 (100)
10:11:05 Sell 100 @ 120.80 (flat)

I made a few other trades in DE as well, but was mostly flat to slightly negative in them.

The key to my number today though was that I minimized my losses. My biggest loser was for $59 in WCC. This is going to be my focus going forward. Minimizing losses. I'm seeing the opportunities to make money, now I need to get the discipline to stop the ugly losers and everything should be okay.

A lot of my losers are coming from having stubborn conviction or simply lunging at trades. As Misstrade said to me once, "Patience little grasshopper." and he is correct.

Incidentally, check the interview he has on his site about his trading methods. Good stuff! And it's nice to see one of the original VOers get some recognition. If you've been following along here you know he's been on a great streak from the VO inception.

Anyway, I'm out of here for the rest of the day. I may also take tomorrow off. I'm trying to get in touch with EvolutionTrader to see if he can post the VO for the next two days. If not, it will be here again on Monday.

The VO is set to change soon. Stay tuned.

Anyway, here's the stats:

P&L, $1441
Best, DE $466
Worst, WCC, -$59

shares traded, 19,600
stocks traded, 13, 9 positive, 4 negative
total trades, 113

I'll come away from this month with a little over $1000 in my pocket.