When Life Interrupts The Trading Day

My morning, and really my day is best understood by looking at the two graphs below. DE reported earnings, gapped up and then went negative. AG trades with DE, so the trade was to short both. This I did and I made good money in both stocks.

Unfortunately, I was in "light trading mode" because of the excessive churn of yesterday and also because I had an appointment to visit a potential nursery school for my daughter this morning. Therefore, while I caught over a point move in each stock, I only had 300 shares for each.




I also had good trades getting short HXM and LNN.

I had gains of a little over $1000 by 10:45. I had to leave for my appointment though, so I left a bunch of short positions. Everything was going great when I left so I felt pretty safe. I put my stops pretty far away and walked out the door whistling a tune of financial freedom.

Five minutes after I left my computer, the market bottomed and all my positions went against me. When I returned from my appointment, I had lost over half of my gains on the day. I was pissed, so instead of trading angry I just turned off the screens and focused on some spring cleaning.

Anyway, here's the stats:

P&L, $552
Best, AG $379
Worst, CPA, -$344

shares traded, 16,200
stocks traded, 14, 7 positive, 7 negative
total trades, 145