For you bloggers, here's an interesting link that was provided to me by "Reese" over at Chasing Charts.
Just type in your blog address and it will tell you what reading level is required to understand your blog.
Meanwhile, check over at "the Fly's" new blog for my inaugural post on "Men Who Look Like Old Lesbians."
NOTE: Originally published 11/27/07. "Bumped" because it came back into play.
UPDATE: TG, I don't know what you're talking about... :)
Okay, well a lot of this will sound obvious or perhaps repetitive. I've read these same things many times before. I am writing this post mostly, for myself.
As far as I can tell there were 3 main factors to my "blowup" today.
1. Amazingly poor trading in AG, my second worst stock of the day. I made 10 unprofitable trades in the stock, 1 profitable trade.
2. CF. I played the "anticipation" game and lost. Meaning that instead of waiting for him to break a downtrend line to purchase, I continually anticipated the break and it never broke the line.
3. "Pyramiding" incorrectly. I was adding to my positions in stocks too late, or sometimes, too quickly. Pyramiding may work in a strongly trending market, but in a choppy trendless market, it is not a good strategy. On days where there is no clear trend or strong movement, it probably is best to buy (or short) once instead of aggressively adding to the position.
In short, I made lots of bad decisions today.
Here are some "rules" I've written down so that maybe in time I will remember them.
* Don't try and pick tops. At least wait for a pullback and a failed test of the high. Anything else is insanity. ESPECIALLY at the open.
* If a stock doesn't drop below your entry don't needlessly second guess your position. Winners sometimes develop slowly. Give them time and let them run.
* Don't trade trendless, low volume stocks.
* If you trade a stock 3 times in a row unprofitably, you're churning it. Leave it alone.
* Unless you're trading with levels from the previous day, or unless a stock is breaking some pre-determined level on it's daily chart trade the open with half size.
* Pay strong attention to the levels set in the first half hour of trading.
That last video was incomplete... besides, after analyzing my trades I'm feeling much more positive, despite my "smokage."
Today was one of those days when I felt myself making a bunch of mistakes but I made them nonetheless.
I didn't add to losing positions or anything either... so I haven't yet figured out exactly where I went wrong. I'm still confused.
I know I got sucked into the movement in the fertilizer and agricultural names early and that got me trading in "active mode" in an otherwise slow day in the market. These stocks were great to trade early, but after that, they turned into shit.
I'm going to come back to this post later, after I go through each and every trade I made today to figure out where I made the big mistakes.
Here's the stats:
P&L, -$1967
Best, TRA, $714
Worst, MOS, -$779
52,300 shares traded.
23 stocks traded. 8 winners, 15 losers.
Evolution, $2689 on 129,000 shares traded.
Dehtrader, $984 on 4920 shares traded.
OBAT, $137 on 14,600 shares traded.
Akalawoo, $80 on 200 shares traded.
Denarii, $45 on 200 shares traded.
Wincity, no trades.
Sanglucci, no trades.
Me, -$1967 on 52,300 shares traded.
It's tough to objectively analyze today's trading when I "shit the shower," but nonetheless, here goes.
Everything sucked today. I'd be surprised if the sun rises tomorrow.
There.
Okay, okay... volume blew today as we barely managed to get over 1.2 billion shares traded on the NYSE.
The indexes basically chopped around. I called this action last week... what can I say?
Prescience is overrated when trading the market.
Meanwhile, it was a perfect day for the bulls... small pullback on very light volume.
There was interesting action today in the fertilizer names and of course, in the financial names. There was also conflicting movement in some of the big tech leaders. In short, I feel like there is some real positioning going on right now, ahead of Uncle Ben and the fucking FED.
The VO kicked ass...minus me.
See you tomorrow. Right now, to ease my pain, I'm going outside to blow leaves onto my neighbor's property.
All the fun today was in the fertilizer stocks. I'm not sure if they smell like manure or not, but I thought that was a nice title for a post.
Anyway, I made money in a couple, but also got completely smoked in one, MON.
That third bar today kind of put my P&L in the shitter. Since then, I've been fighting back.
I expect a choppy week. However, there was loads of opportunity out there today. I expect the VO will post some decent numbers today.
NOTE: While we're on the topic of manure, go check HPT's post on his trading blowups this year. Don't you love reading about other trader's disasters?
