U2, "Mysterious Ways"

I lose money and must post bad music as punishment...

I hate U2... always have, and always will, since they just keep getting worse with age.

The Streak Comes To An End

I've spent more money pruning trees and raking leaves in the last 3 days than I have trading.

I've been looking for trades early, taking them if they're there and then heading outside at 11am or so. I do yardwork, as I attempt to limit the tick population around my house, and then come back around 2:30 to see if anything has set up for the afternoon.

So it's been slow. At the same time, it hasn't been a bad kind of slow, because I haven't wasted time staring at the monitors. I've been productive. It almost feels like a mini-vacation or something.

Anyway, the yard is pretty damn clean now, so I'm going to focus again on studying for and taking the Series 55. We're at a slow time here in the market. Volume seems to be on the wane and we're a few weeks away from earnings season. People want to be outside, the beach weather has returned... thoughts are drifting away from Wall Street.

Seems like a good time to trade less and study more...

This morning I forced trades and paid the price. My worst was in WG, which I bought at $46.10 hoping for a run to $47. The problem with this trade wasn't really my entry (although I was later than I had to be), it was my exit and position size.

I wanted to buy at $46, but looked away for a moment. The next thing I know, it was trading $46.10. I bought 500 there, kind of in a panic. What I should have done, since the stock was already past my buy point, was reduce my size. 500 is about my max right now... I should have gone with 300 after I missed my ideal fill spot.



So I bought and the stock immediately reversed. I was slow to sell. I waited until it traded below $45.85 and received the bulk of my shares around $46.75. So I lost 35 cents on 500 shares. It was totally avoidable, and it's the reason why I finished in the red today.

Too bad since it broke my recent winning streak. I had 9 green days in a row there... can't remember the last time that happened. Despite today's loss, I feel that I'm on the right path. In addition to my recent string of green days, I haven't lost more than $100 in a trading day in almost a month (last time was May 19th). That means that even if I'm only pulling $100 or $200 a day from the market, it's adding up.

It's only a matter of time before I have a nice $500+ day again... and since I'm keeping the losses small, it will really count.

Looking forward to it. However, I'm keeping my patience. The market feels kind of crappy right now for trading and I'm not going to force anything.

I want to make one more point about my day. I screwed up the WG and let it effect a couple of other trades I made. I had an excellent entry on CF at one point, got scared, and took 5 cents only to watch it run 2 dollars more from my entry... so I wrote the following down. I'm including it among my "stock trading rules" tag, even if it's more psychological than anything else...

"View each trade as a separate event. Do not let one bad move (or good move) influence your next decision."

Anyway, the worst part about my loss is that it means I must post bad music tonight...

Here's the stats:
P&L, -$89
Best, MON, $65
Worst, WG, -$73

4000 shares traded.
5 stocks traded, 2 winners, 3 losers.

Virtual Office, -$435. Dow, -38.27, 12,269.08.

Denarii, -$1 on 3400 shares traded.
Me, -$89 on 4000 shares traded.
OBAT, -$121 on 4800 shares traded.
Tokyo, -$224 on 3124 shares traded.

Wow. Everyone lost money. The volume was light and my main office also pretty much sucked, I guess it just wasn't a day to trade.

Half of the traders in my RO (real office) made money, and half did not. The range was $3296 to -$1156. I was number 13 of 22 today.

Perhaps everyone is waiting on the earnings news from GS tomorrow. Who knows, but the script that has been leading the market for the last few months remained intact... long coal, long ag, long oil and natty gas.

The HCPG guys took this week off. Perhaps they're onto something there... I'll be taking it easy until trades begin to show themselves again.

Barack Obama's Father's Day Speech

Happy Monday. I'm dusting off the cobwebs. I was busy all day yesterday drinking and philandering.

Great speech by the way. Please check it out.



NOTE: The VO will be up around 5pm.