Trading Stock

A simple post title because it was a simple day of trading. No over thinking, no churning, just some buys and then some sells.

I lost money today when I was stubborn and fought the market. My worst stock of the day was LNN, I lost $118 in him on a 200 share long position.



I bought 200 shares at 10:00 this morning at 43.14. This was really a mistake because the market was trading down at this time. I bought it because I'm very bullish on the stock longer term and I let it effect my daytrading. This is almost always a mistake.

That said, I love the pullback from the highs on lower volume. The next strong day in the market will probably see this stock trade north of 44 again. Still, I should have respected the market weakness today and not made this trade. At least I limited my mistake to one trade in the stock.

In fact, my four worst losers of the day were each traded only once. This is a huge departure from my losers of the recent past. Back when I was churning and habitually overtrading, my worst stocks of the day were almost always the stock I traded the most. This is a positive development.

My best stock of the day was TNH. I almost referred to him as "my old buddy" but then I remember that in the stock market you have no "friends".



Here are my trades:

9:58:08 Short 100 @ 130.93 (-100)
10:28:25 Buy 100 @ 126.89 (flat)
10:29:13 Short 100 @ 128.15 (-100)
10:30:47 Short 200 @ 129.44 (-300)
10:36:27 Buy 300 @ 128.80 (flat)
10:37:17 Short 100 @ 129.68 (-100)
10:38:50 Buy 100 @ 131.20 (flat)
10:53:20 Short 100 @ 129.25 (-100)
11:28:05 Buy 100 @ 129.75 (flat)
14:23:31 Short 100 @ 131 (-100)
14:45:49 Short 100 @ 130.17 (-200)
14:48:12 Buy 100 @ 129.72 (-100)
15:55:22 Buy 100 @ 130.80 (flat)

As you can see, I made one good trade in the stock all day, my first. After that, I basically broke even in the stock. I'm lucky I did, because the stock was up 5 points on the day. So while this was my best stock, netting me $322, I made a lot of trading mistakes in it today. Still, I was careful in my trades, so bonus points for that.

Other than those two, I had good trades shorting CNH, UBB and VMC. I had no bad losers.

I find that a hallmark of my good days is completely controlling my losers. Sounds obvious, but I wanted to write it down here so I would remember it.

Only 3 more trading days of the month. I'm up a little and I would love to build on it. Let's hope for some more volatility. So far, so good with this more efficient method.

Here's the stats:

P&L, $611
Best, TNH, $322
Worst, LNN, -$118

shares traded, 13,200
stocks traded, 16, 9 winners, 7 losers
total trades, 85