Slow And Steady

I tend to hate trading gap-down/gap-up days on the open. So I exercised a bit of restraint and discipline and stayed away for the first 10 minutes of chop.

My next 3 trades were all solid winners. I short AGU twice and made over 50 cents the first time and 40 cents the second time. My third trade was similar as I made a straight point shorting MOS. Thing is, since I'm still taking it easy, I was only trading 100 shares.

So while I didn't make huge money on these trades, they were successful. The more I make good trades and gain my feel for the market again, the more confidence I'll have. In time, I will build my size again and the money will come.

Anyway, I short AGU because he opened and tried to trade up through the low made yesterday afternoon. So when he traded above $70, I thought he would run into resistance because the market was so weak. You can see it here on the 30-minute graph.



My best stock of the day was COH. I'm really liking this stock lately because it trades fluidly and it hasn't been as volatile as the other stocks I normally trade so it's been a good stock for me to watch. I short him when he broke the opening range low and made a little money. However, I made more on the afternoon long.



I was looking long even though the market was getting smoked because the stock stabilized after some heavy down volume right around noon. After that, it started to show good volume bars on the upside and weak volume whenever it traded down. Also, TIF, another specialty/high end retailer was showing signs of life.

My worst stock of the day was CNX. This was a simple pair trade gone wrong. I was watching the other coal stocks go negative on the day and short a little CNX thinking it would play catch-up around noon. It did not.



I could blame myself for trading in the middle of the day. However, it wasn't a big disaster. I took the loss and let it go. As it turns out, I should have kept watching because it dropped sharply in the afternoon session.

Anyway, another good day of confidence building and learning. I'm getting my feel back.

Here's the stats:

P&L, $295
Best, COH, $144
Worst, CNX, -$119

11,800 shares traded.
10 stocks traded, 7 winners, 3 losers.