A Good Day Of Stock Trading

The goodness started early. For the first time in a long while, I entered some orders at the open and they worked.

At the open, I got short FED because of the weakness in CFC and CF because of the weakness in TNH.





This is the way I used to trade. Find the stock with news or volatility and trade a related stock that will move, but won't be as volatile and, in theory, less dangerous.

As it turned out, I covered both stocks early. But that's fine because what's important is that both trades were profitable and got me started off. I'm not looking to make perfect trades, I'm looking to make money.

Anyway, the next stock I got short was one of my recent favorites, BTJ.



I short him because all of the oils were coming off hard and he's been a real momentum play. With momentum getting slapped marketwide, I figured it was only a matter of time before BTJ got shelled as well. This stock isn't for everyone, that's for sure. The spreads are wide and it can get spiky. Worse still, it trades on the (enter scary music here)AMEX... but, it was my best stock of the day as I made $551 in the bastard.

Anyway, I've started to feel excited about trading again... I mean, I'm still down on the month due largely to my blowup last Tuesday, but things still seem to be getting better. It's all mental. Hopefully, I will be able to write intelligently about this all in the near future. I'll be able to look back with some perspective on "the slump" and be done with it.

We'll see.

If there's one thing that has been an awful hallmark of this particular slump it's that when I start to feel confident I get smoked all over again. The good news is that I've set very tight loss limits with my company so right now, it's impossible for me to blowup. I think that's been somewhat freeing psychologically. Knowing that if I lose a certain amount I will not be able to place orders has been a great incentive not to screw up too badly (so I can keep trading) but its also insulated me from massive losses that will kill my confidence (not to mention my P&L).

Looking forward to the rest of the week.

Here's the stats:
P&L, $2091
Best, BTJ, $551
Worst, CFC, -$109

shares traded, 29,000
17 stocks traded, 11 winners, 6 losers
139 total trades