The Byrds, "I Wasn't Born To Follow"

Building

As you know, I woke up this morning in a good mood. I wasn't just in a good mood, I had been anxious all weekend to trade. I have to say, it has been awhile since I was so motivated to trade.

Unfortunately, when I opened my software, I had a few problems. I won't bore you with them, they have to do with my transition. But basically, I couldn't trade early.

So I barely traded. Because I could fit it all on one screen, I decided to cut and paste my order window, for your entertainment. There it is.



As you can see, I'm trading with very light size still.

Anyway, I had a decent day. I was very happy about my trades in COH, both sides.



My first trade came right around 10am, when the stock rallied hard off the lows up near the opening price. I figured it may hit some resistance, and with other high end retailers getting spanked (TIF, ZLC) I felt pretty good about the trade. So I went size and "smacked" the stock down with a 200 share short order.

I covered 100 at $26.11 because I still have remnants of suckiness. My original plan had my stop up at $26.30, or over the opening range high of the morning. For whatever reason, I got nervous and covered half. Of course, I kicked myself immediately afterwards as the stock broke the figure and headed below my original sale price.

Anyway, you can see what happened on my order screen. When I covered the 200 shares around 12:25, I meant to only cover 100 but entered 2 orders accidentally. A total learning mistake.

I also caught some of the move on the way back up after 2pm. This time, I "sized up" with a 500 share order and a 100 share add. As I get more comfortable with my software and the market again, this will be my normal position size for most stocks.

My worst trade of the day came close to the close in DSL.



At around 3:40, DSL broke its downtrend on the 5-min on huge volume. I bought 300 shares a few minutes later. Unfortunately, the stock topped out and rolled. I placed 3 separate stop orders in the stock, one below the green bar that broke the downtrend, one below the prior 5-minute bar, and one at the low of the afternoon. Each of them were hit and I took the loss.

Despite my low volume and P&L total, today was a great day for me. I took a lot out of my trades and felt very in control and emotionally stable. I mean, I didn't get emotionally involved in any one trade... I entered, set my stops, and for the most part, let them work or fail.

I'll be in bed early again and hope to wake and do more research tomorrow.

Here's the stats:

P&L, $149
Best, COH, $162
Worst, DSL, -$65

8 stocks traded, 5 winners, 3 losers
4800 shares traded

Virtual Office, -$3637. Dow, +171.85, 12,778.15.

Me, $149 on 4800 shares traded.
Dehtrader, $102 on 1100 shares traded.
Wincity, $56 on 650 shares traded.
OBAT, $32 on 16,800 shares traded.
Retardo, vacationing
Akalawoo, no trades.
Denarii, -$25 on 600 shares traded.
Sanglucci, -$492 on 4000 shares traded.
Misstrade, -$640 on 1600 shares traded.
Evolution, -$2819 on 92,600 shares traded.

It was a slow, low volume, low volatility day in the market. We traded just over 1.4 billion shares on the NYSE and the VIX dropped .78 to 22.90.

It's like, over the weekend, people forgot that the market is going to zero, and decided to come in and buy stocks today with very little conviction. This created a very wishy-washy type of day.

But despite the overall trading malaise, there were some ridiculous moves made in the Agricultural and Fertilizer sectors. These sectors just keep on giving volatility to stock traders.

Meanwhile, the VO basically got smoked. You'll find that in this type of trading environment that the cream really does rise to the top.

More on my "huge" day later...

Lindsay's New Digs

I'm guessing her new vlogging gig has something to do with political culture and events. That's cool, she can still do nude scenes now and then...

Au Revoir, Lindsay!

Lindsay has moved on.

One can only hope that her acting career fails and that she ends up in b-movies doing sex scenes, sooner, rather than later.

Kidding, Lindsay! (As if she reads my third-tier blog.)

People Hoarding Money, Food

It's an interesting coincidence, but the last time personal consumption declined was when "Bush, The Father" was our president back in 1991.

From the article: "...the country may be experiencing a rare decline in personal consumption, not just a slower rate of growth. Such a decline would be the first since 1991, and it would almost certainly push the entire economy into a recession in the middle of an election year.

There's something about the Bush family that just doesn't inspire confidence in regular people. Check the full article, below.

Americans Cut Back Sharply On Spending

Good Morning

Time: 6:30
Mood: Positive