Maybe We're Onto Something Here

I couldn't tell you the last time I traded and nearly made 50 cents for every share I traded... it's been a long while. I felt like Misstrade out there! Was it the surfing, the new trading style, or HPT joining the VO? We may never know for sure...

Anyway, the day started off with a bang as LNN reported excellent numbers and gapped up a couple of points. I stayed long 400 overnight into the earnings report.



It was my best stock of the day as I net $1281 in him.

My next best stock was AGU.



After the stock ran to new highs around 11am, it pulled back sharply. The reaction bounce at around 11:30 couldn't bring the stock to new highs, so I began to short. I short 400 at 44.80 and then 200 more at 44.77. And then I had to be patient.

I covered 100 shares at 12:16 at the price of 44.42 and was immediately angry with myself. The market was feeling weak, other AG names were showing signs of weakness and I knew I should have just held.

My next cover came at 1:38, 200 shares at 44.15. While in retrospect this too was an early cover, I didn't think it was too bad because the stock hit the figure and bounced sharply. Also, at that point, the futures looked to be improving.

I covered the last couple hundred shares very near the close, around 43.60. So this was a trade that I was in for 6 hours. That's a very long hold for this trader. I net $453 in AGU.

Anyway, I had similar trades in CF and DE netting about the same. Both trades were shorts and in both case I again didn't jump to cover. In short, I made good trades in the names.

It has always helped me when an entire group of stocks is acting strong or weak. Today, the entire group of AG names started acting weak at about the same time. Check charts of POT, TNH, CF, DE, CNH, AG and MOS. There was a lot of money to be made in a sector trade here today. When my confidence builds again, trades like that can be month-makers. Patience...

Anyway, I had one other good trade today in BEN. I caught a 4 point drop between 1 and 4pm. The only bad news about this trade is that I only had 100 shares. I had limits for more above where I got the 100 shares off but they were never hit. Still, I was very happy that I didn't cover into the spike-down at 3pm. I could have, but I decided instead to see if it would run further. It did and I made an extra $100 because of that patience.



As important as my winners were today it's worth noting that my biggest loser was for -$36 in AB. Also important was my winner to loser ratio, 8 winners and 2 losers.

So while LNN started my day off with a bang, it was less than half of my total gains. I simply traded well today and I hope I can keep it up tomorrow.

Anyway, here's the stats:

P&L, $2977
Best, LNN, $1281
Worst, AB, -$36

shares traded, 7000
stocks traded, 10, 8 positive, 2 negative
total trades, 55