Market Digests Gains; Dinosaur Trader Suffers Indigestion

What a boring day.



I actually made money between 10 and 12 but decided to place stop orders instead of selling positions at market. Almost all of my stops were hit as the market declined into the afternoon. Unfortunately, the money I made was only offsetting losses that I took at around 9:45 when the market dropped like a rock for 3 minutes.

See that big red bar at 9:45? Fuck the robots.

Anyway, my best stock of the day today was JLL.



I caught some of the trend, but only with a few hundred shares. This stock is thin and can sometimes drop (or rise) precipitously for no good reason. In the afternoon, all of the financial names continued their squeeze. I guess people got nervous going into Uncle Ben's speech tonight... anyway, that would have been a great place to make money in the afternoon. Unfortunately, I was already put to sleep by the market and just not feeling like getting actively involved.

Looking back, I should have been involved because all of the financials rallied into the close.

My worst stock of the day was EXM, which I tried to short in the morning.



You can see why that was a mistake. The good news is that I screwed up the trade and didn't keep at it with revenge trading or anything. I let it go. 300 shares traded, a half point loss, move on.

What more can I say? I spent the better part of the day drinking peppermint tea trying to recover from some gastro-distress.

Finally, Herb Greenberg is the kind of guy you don't want to get a beer with.

Here's the stats:

P&L, $17
Best, JLL, $293
Worst, EXM, -$157

26,600 shares traded.
21 stocks traded, 9 winners, 12 losers.