Perfect Day

I woke this morning a little depressed that I wouldn't be surfing. Getting up early to go surfing has been a great routine. Wake before the sun, drive to my friend's house, and then drive east to the break as the sun rises. I've seen many colorful sunrises these last few weeks.

So I crawled out of bed a little later and did some extra research. With the CFC and BAC news, I knew the market would be gapping up. I hate trading the open when the market gaps up. Why? Because I often feel all bullish and buy a bunch of stuff pre-open and then lose 25 cents over and over again.

Perhaps it's because I feel fairly strongly that this recent move up is a bull trap, I don't know, I decided to fade the gap up. It worked pretty well. There were two exceptions, I got long FED and DSL at the open because I knew both have large short interests and so I figured they would squeeze on the CFC news. Great logic right? FED worked like a charm but DSL spanked me. So much for logic.

Anyway, after those plays I started looking for shorts. My best of the day was in LDK, a solar company.

The rest of the solars were down or weaker than LDK, so I threw in a short for 500 shares and was filled at $45.20. That was the best part of the trade. My covers were bad. I took 200 off at $45.10 (I was nervous, okay?) 100 at $44.60, 100 at $44.03 and the final hundred at $43.39. I think when things heat up again I'm going to increase my position size a bit so that I can cover a chunk of my positions early and let more ride.

Anyway, I had a bunch of other good shorts too. RWT, AGU, BID and OMG. The problem with all of these positions was that I only threw a few hundred shares of each out there so I didn't really capitalize like I could have. But I wanted to take it easy... heck, I should be on vacation right now!

So by 10:45 I was done trading. I went with my wife and daughter to a natural history museum, a puppet show and out to lunch. After lunch I got a call from my friend saying that the winds had shifted in our favor and I went out to surf for the afternoon. Then, when I got home we had a good friend over for dinner. All in all, it was as great day.

Again, sorry for the lazy and infrequent posting. All will be back to normal here after Labor Day.
Here's the stats:

P&L, $1008
Best, LDK, $397
Worst, DSL, -$197

13,400 shares traded.
14 stocks traded, 9 winners, 5 losers.
81 trades.