AAAAARRRGH!

Wow, I really, really, sucked today.

I trade actively in the first hour of trade. When that first hour is without good action, it normally means my whole day will blow. Today is the perfect example of the type of morning I should avoid trading the open though. A gap up morning.

More often than not, I find when the market gaps up a lot that it tends to flatline for awhile in order to digest its gains. So if you buy a lot of stuff at the open, you lose 10 cents, 25 cents, over and over again. I think in the future I'll try to have a little more discipline on these mornings, let the market gap up, digest and then try to buy when stocks break out after digestion.

So I lost a lot early. I knew my day was over at 10:45 when I made a nasty revenge trade in RDN.



It was actually one of my better stocks of the morning as I caught the short. But then I got short again, around $14. I short 1000 shares and got stopped out at $14.20 or, the high of the move. Next thing I know, it's back to $14. So what do I do? I short 2000 shares. When it dropped below the figure, I added, forgetting that the stock was worth only $14... I mean, how much did I think it was going to drop? Why add? So many mistakes. Anyway, It bounced and came up to $14 again, where I added more shares. I got out of all of the shares for a nasty loss at around 11:30 or, the high of the move and managed to lose $200 in a stock that I was up close to $1000 in earlier in the day.

I'm not even going to get into the latino banks. They all got me.

Anyway, my daughter just woke from her nap with a fever and a stuffed nose. Most likely an ear infection. Needless to say, I'm suddenly very busy.

Here's the stats:

P&L, -$2115
Best, DSX, $352
Worst, TBSI, -$345

71,800 shares traded.
32 stocks traded, 10 winners, 22 losers.
217 trades.