A Big Day

At around 2:30pm, I thought it was 11:00am... no joke.

It's hard to begin this post. As you can imagine, I feel a little light-headed right now... almost shellshocked.

Look at the above graph of the Dow. I was long between 15k and 20k of stock at that point right when it decided to drop 200 points. I mean, I was in a bunch of stocks... I had no choice but to sell, because trust me, at 3:00pm, it certainly looked like we were going to test the lows of the day, we were only 50 points away on the Dow...

I liquidated every single one of my positions. And I called my wife up to ask her if I had enough "buffer" to trade the rest of the day. She gave me a big smile and said that I was doing fine.

I now know that I was up about $11,000 when she checked at 3pm. I'm pretty sure I lost close to $10,000 between 2pm and 3pm... with all of those positions, it was hard not to.

Anyway, I'm not sure if I should do this chronologically or what. Here's my best stock of the day, HXM.



Here are my trades from the last hour of the day in this stock:

15:17 Buy 500 @ 45.97 (500)
15:22 Buy 300 @ 46 (800)
15:24 Sell 100 @ 45.89 (700)
15:24 Sell 200 @ 45.88 (500)
15:27 Buy 300 @ 46.14 (800)
15:28 Buy 400 @ 46.26 (1200)
15:28 Buy 300 @ 46.41 (1500)
15:33 Buy 300 @ 46.56 (1800)
15:35 Sell 300 @ 47.13 (1500)
15:38 Sell 300 @ 46.82 (1200)
15:45 Sell 500 @ 46.86 (700)
15:57 Sell 200 @ 48.35 (500)
15:58 Sell 200 @ 49.14 (300)
15:59 Sell 300 @ 50 (flat)

This is less skill and more like, being in the right place at the right time. In fact, I'd love to have those 500 shares I sold at $46.86 back...

My second best stock of the day was PCP. I made $3900 in him. Again, mostly in the last hour. I had 500 shares for the entire move.



And then, there's UBB...



I traded 26,000 shares of UBB alone today. I basically built up a really nice position for the run from $92 to $100. Of course, I didn't hold it all... I was selling on the way up. But here's the part that sucked. I never saw it trade $100... and really, the next thing I know it was trading $96 again. 4 points gone in less than 5 minutes. I added at around the $96 level and had over 2000 shares when it plummeted down to $94. I got out, cursing. I had just given between $5,000 and $10,000 away in the stock in very short order.

However, I did buy back, quite aggressively, though not until it traded back up to $96. I was too battered in the stock to be buying when it was $93... at that point, I was sure it was headed back to the lows. That's about the same time that I called Judy in to check my P&L. I was really dejected at that point because I knew I had just thrown thousands away. In fact, and I know this may seem crazy now, but I asked her to check because I thought I might be close to negative on the day.

Anyway, while these were my 3 big winners of the day the real deal is that I had 12 winners for over $1000 today while my biggest loser of the day was $761. That's how the numbers added up like they did.

So TBSI was my worst. The reason? It just didn't bounce! I mean, it did have a move from $26 to $28... but I didn't catch it. Luckily, I never had more than 400 shares of the stock. I got chopped multiple times in him.



Sorry this post is lame but I'm shot. I'm walking away from the computer now and going to get dinner with friends. Perhaps after dinner I'll be able to reflect some more. Right now, my head is still spinning.

Here's the stats:
P&L, $28077
Best, HXM, $4239
Worst, TBSI, -$761

shares traded, 211,400
49 stocks traded, 33 winners, 16 losers
903 trades

NOTE: If you haven't already, please vote in my poll. Thanks!