Early Fireworks

More like bombs!

I woke up and saw that the 200 share short position I held overnight in TNH was going to rip my face off at the open. I stayed short overnight because I got short yesterday in the middle of the afternoon and it never reached my buy stop that I had up at 128. So, I started the day down $700.



Then all was kind of quiet. I actually bought TNH and made most of my losses back in him on the long side. But then I noticed IOC. This stock has been demolished recently. Today was the first day I decided to stick my toes in the water of this lunatic.

It's bad enough that the stock has lost over half of it's value in the last few trading sessions. Worse yet, it trades on the (enter scary music here) AMEX!

I won't bore you with all of the details, but let's just say I remembered why I don't trade these falling knives anymore... it's simply because I want to live a long healthy life.



It ended up being my worst stock of the day, I lost $233 in him. No disaster ( I don't really own 20k from $44...) but still, it wasn't pleasant and kept me mentally wrapped up in a real piece of shit. Meanwhile, I had other stuff that was working in my favor.

Again, I made most of my good trades today on the short side. My best was a short in VNO but I also had good shorts in VMC, EDU and HXM. Additionally, I had one good long today, in LNN.



Next week is going to be completely dead. And, I have a very strict plan that I intend to follow so that I use the week constructively.

I will more or less be papertrading and studying the market. I am going to limit myself to 10 trades a day and study Maoxian's setups that Woodshedder gave me the link for.

I will also surf and spend time with my family. We also have another goddamn children's party to go to... But mostly, I'm just gonna chill out and come back strong and ready for Monday July, 9.

I said yesterday that July is a pivotal month for me. This is because it has literally been months since I've made good money trading. We have fairly modest expenses here but I have to face reality. If I don't make money in July I will start sending resumes out. I can manage to trade and not make any money doing it until December, but after that I'll probably have a nervous breakdown.

So, in order to avoid that kind of event, I'm planning ahead. I figure that having to write up a resume and trying to present myself in some type of professional manner to people who are judging me should scare the shit out of me enough where it will really get me to focus hard on trading well. Maybe "the fly" will pay me to be a weekend blogger. I'll do it for $2500 per weekend. Sound good?

Trading is a great job when the money is pouring in. You are completely free. If you don't respect that you lose that freedom. Anyway... have a safe weekend. If you're drunk, call a cab.

Here's the stats.

P&L, $283
Best, VNO, $457
Worst, IOC, -$233

shares traded, 23,800
stocks traded, 15, 8 positive, 7 negative
total trades, 139