Trading Stubborn Gets You Smoked
On a day where the market gets crushed, I lost money on the short side.
Can you believe that shit???
And I was up minimally going into this disaster of a trade.
I know that it sounds like I'm constantly repeating myself here and that I make the same mistakes, over and over again. It's true, I'm slow to learn from my mistakes.
However, after all this time writing about these things, I do get a little voice in my head that starts telling me I'm making mistakes as I'm making them. It's just that that voice happens to be very tiny and my big loud idiot voice still easily overcomes it and dominates my thinking.
Remember this recent post? I'm believing it more and more. Perfection in trading, like searching for and finding spiritual enlightenment, doesn't come easily and sometimes, you stray from the path. It's more of a practice. Wisdom builds slowly.
The reason I began to short PCR was because it was up strong in a weak market. In fact, its entire sector was weak too... I don't "get" why it was up so strongly, but I guess it was the whole "there were more buyers than sellers" thing. So, I lost over $500 in the stock because I got stubborn.
At the same time, I started getting cute and trying to pick the bottom in a couple of rather volatile stocks, namely, BEN and FLR. I lost another $350 on those trades.
The $850 giveback between those 3 stocks accounts for my entire loss on the day.
Mistakes feed off of other mistakes. It is one of the truisms of trading.
Anyway, just need to move on from this stinker. Until I went "on tilt" with PCR I was okay... so 80% of my day I was smart and I guess that's the silver lining.
Here's the stats:
P&L, -$872
Best, TIF, $187
Worst, PCR, -$505
23,400 shares traded.
19 stocks traded. 8 winners, 11 losers.
6 comments:
DT,
Wow, you shorted the 1 stock that was up today! LoL
Sorry!
I got crushed in NYX today. I sold nearly half my stock last night pre-earnings (12 pts higher from where we are now), which is my only consolation. This is a daytrader's market!
-BD
Plenty of stocks went up today. GOOG is a good example. I almost lost money on the stupid R which almost went up today after going up big on a profit warning last Friday. It's a jungle out there.
Some more examples of stupid stocks today: FOSL, WHR, LVS, WYNN, OMI, CPO. And I fought all of them except LVS and WYNN.
Yeah, it's definitely a little hairy out there right now.
I'm still baffled by the low volume... and I'm not sure if this means the sellers are losing their balls or what.
-DT
DT, I've been watching PCR for nearly a year now and I can tell you that the stock is WAK! It never does what you think it should. I dives 10% when the sector is up and can take off when everything is going to shit. I really thought it was seriously undervalued until this last earnings report. It seems the company has some serious problems. If you can get the timing right, the moves are usually large. On the other hand, if you get the timing wrong, the moves are usally large! Good luck
PoorOkie
dg,
So you're the poorokie, huh? Nice work over at the PG.
Meanwhile, "If you can get the timing right, the moves are usually large. On the other hand, if you get the timing wrong, the moves are usally large!"
Well said,
-DT
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