Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Come Back Mojo!

Perhaps it was my lack of sleep but today I just missed out on the volatility.

I mean, when the Dow is down 200 points, you expect to be able to find and execute some decent trades. Today, I saw a lot of choppiness and I just wasn't convinced that my positions would follow through for me.

So, I lightened up my position sizes and played defense.

I mean, really, you have to be playing offense in this market. You need to be aggressive with your positions if you want to make decent money. However, there are times when you may not be feeling it for whatever reason (like you slept in a tent in your daughter's playroom) and you just need to be smart about it. You can't force trades.

So here's my best stock of the day, TFX.



I got short at $74.25 and added all the way down to $73.50. I actually thought this trade would work out much better, but the stock ran into some buyers and I was forced to cover. I missed the second short of the day around noon because I was in full on defensive mode at that point. I stood by my rule of not trading between 12 and 2 today because I just saw lots of chop with little follow-through.

My worst trade of the day was in FED.



I was short when he decided to rally from 11 to 11:30. He basically tore my face off. Now, I'm short overnight. I fully expect to lose money in my overnight short. I am not allowed to make money in overnight trades. God won't allow it.

Anyway, these last 2 days of trading make me really want to take that vacation I've been planning on. However, Tropical Storm Dean may make that an impossibility. Not because I was planning on going to Puerto Rico or anything but because this hurricane could really mess with the price of oil.

We'll see. For now, I've updated the sidebar with a website that is tracking the storm's progress.

Here's the stats:

P&L,
$117
Best, TFX, $493
Worst, FED, -$543

shares traded, 24,800
19 stocks traded, 9 winners, 10 losers
141 trades


NOTE: The CEO of TMA will be on CNBC soon. I'll post a synopsis... of sorts.

2 comments:

Student_Of_The_Trade said...

Hi DT...curious what MA's you use on your charts? (what time period, simple or exponential)

Are there any other key indicators or "studies" you plot to help pick entries and exits?

CHEERS!

D

Dinosaur Trader said...

Hey, thanks again for the wsj online article.

On my intraday charts, I use 10,20 and 40 period SMAs.

On my dailys, I use 10,50 and 200.

The only one I really pay any attention to is the 50 period on the daily.

Besides that, the only thing on my charts is volume. I don't use any other "studies."

-DT