Suede, "The Drowners"

Great song if you like "the Britpop."

Gaining Traction

Since my "hell week" from early last month, where I lost 5 days in a row, I've been on a decent run. I've been green about 2 of every 3 days and have booked $2000 in gains. Surely, a $24,000 year is nothing to be too proud of, but all of those gains were made entirely from the new style of trading I've been working on... no "old DT" plays.

Once you get the hang of a style of trading, and gain confidence in it, making more money with it is as simple (okay... or as difficult) as increasing your position sizes. Since I've been trading largely with 200 and 300 share positions, it shouldn't be too difficult to almost get to a living wage level of earnings again.

I've been trading extremely lightly... trying hard to identify exactly the right time to enter positions in order to maximize my gains and control my losses. I've been very careful with my position sizing. I haven't had any psychologically damaging loss days... in short, I feel as if I've made some real progress. I mean, I know why I'm making money, and when I lose money, I know what I'm doing wrong. I also know that I've left a lot on the table, even with my small size... I could have done much better this past month even with my small lots.

Perhaps my hell week was the bottom. Anyway, I've been bouncing along this bottom for so long, that I'm cautiously optimistic at best... but I feel better, at least.

My best trade of the day came in CMI. HCPG alerted to a possible short through $66. It was a little wild early, but calmed down right by the opening low to plunge through $66.50. I caught a quick half point on 400 of the 500 shares. The other 100 shares I stopped at my entry, hoping for a larger move.



Unfortunately, the "larger move" I was hoping for came in the middle of the day, when I'm loath to trade. I also wasn't quite sure how to handle the stock since it had already violated "the number" in the morning and sharply rallied back through it... so I missed it.



Too bad.

I also had some decent trades in XTO and CSH. Again, the best thing is that I kept my losses in check. My worst loss of the day was on a 100 share position in FCX, for $58.

Off to the beach for some sunset dining with friends. It's way too hot to hang around in the house...

Anyway, here's the stats:

P&L, $270
Best, CMI, $205
Worst, FCX, -$58

4800 shares traded
9 stocks traded, 4 winners, 5 losers.

Virtual Office, $334. Dow, +70.51, 12280.32.

Me, $275 on 4800 shares traded.
OBAT, $50 on 11,200 shares traded.
Tokyo, $9 on 3449 shares traded.

For a June Monday, the market yielded some nice action.

The ag stocks continued their meteoric run, then "shit the shower," gave back most of their gains and then made them back again in the last 30 minutes... AAPL unveiled a new product, oil dropped nearly $3 in just a few minutes and then bounced $2... the list goes on... LEH... coal... you name it.

There's crazy shit going on...

This market loves to confuse. I find it interesting that as we enter into the summer doldrums, when volume typically quiets down, that volume is actually starting to increase. We traded over 1.3 billion shares today. Nice. I'll take it. That said, 165 million of that was in LEH.

Could we expect another interesting summer of trading? One can hope.

Anyway, the VO had a rather quiet day and my real office was about 60% positive. Speaking of the VO, let me take this opportunity to once again thank Tokyo Trader for doing such a fine job hosting it last week.

Stay tuned for a potentially big development concerning this here blog to drop later in the week.

Bush On $4 Gasoline

Watch how instead of answering the question, he subtly mocks the reporter... "So, you're predicting $4 gasoline?"

Varying Impact Of High Gas Prices

Here's a very interesting graphic about how the "high" cost of gasoline is effecting the different parts of the country.

As for everything else, we were away all weekend and I have some catching up to do... my daughter has STARI (not Lyme) and we're treating her but she is getting better. In fact, she's no longer showing any symptoms, which is wonderful. Thanks for all the email with well wishes.

And look, if you're heading out into "tick country" this summer with the kids and they get a tick bite, BE SURE to save the tick (remove it and put it in some alcohol... oh, and just remove it with tweezers, no burning its ass with a match or drowning it in Vaseline) and send it here for analysis. It's easy and will make any diagnosis of the disease it carries (if any) easier.

I'll work on a post later today or this evening.