Monday, July 7, 2008

Fleet Foxes, "White Winter Hymnal"

Official video. Looking forward to Wednesday.

First Trade Is The Best Trade

This has been the theme of my last few weeks. I come in, make a few hundred in the first few minutes and then, I churn a little away...

It happened again today, as my first trade of the day, in SLB, was also my best.

In the first minute of the trading day, SLB dropped from $101 to $100. Since it was a perfect "touch" at $100, I felt pretty good to enter after he bounced up to $100.25 and then dropped straight back down. So I got 400 shares off at $100. I covered at $99.65, $99.50, $99.43 and $99.29. I'm not throwing a graph up, since this all happened in the first 3 minutes of the day... the graph doesn't show much.

Anyway, after that, I made many messy little trades. But the good news is, I limited my losses on them all. My largest loser of the day was APA, for $65. I jumped the gun on this short soon after I covered my SLB and paid a small price. I paid a larger price when I missed the actual drop through $130 about 2 hours later... I need to work on continuing to pay attention to stocks after I feel I "missed" the trade, because often, I've just been early.

I also caught a nice short on ME through $32 that helped eat up almost all of my losers.

All in all, another green day. I still have static going on, but it's definitely lessening, and I feel it when I make the bad trades. I think this will continue to improve.

Anyway, it'll be a hard week for me to blog very actively. Tomorrow, I have to take my Series 7 "continuing education" requirement, and then I have some family matters to attend to the next couple of days after the close. Also, on Wednesday night, I'll be seeing the Fleet Foxes.

But man, I don't mind slowing down in all this heat and humidity... and who wants to be staring at a computer screen anyway? Can't you just feel the heat emanating from it, frying your face?

Good music drops with the sun.

UPDATE: Oh, and for those interested in the RO, it was a pretty good day... however, also a very stressful one. Most of the traders took heavy losses early and then came back in the afternoon for some relatively modest gains. I was #14 of 23 today.

Bush Tours America To Survey Damage Caused By His Presidency


Bush Tours America To Survey Damage Caused By His Disastrous Presidency

Grateful Dead, "Bertha"

How nice that they've named a hurricane after a good song.



Anyway, I pay attention to hurricanes for a few reasons.

First of all, I'm a homeowner, and uncomfortably close to some water.

Second, I'm a trader, and when the next Cat 5 ruins the Gulf Of Mexico, I want to be all over it, mostly so I can laugh at Cajun.

Finally, I'm a surfer, and so I track Atlantic storms to see if they'll produce groundswell.

Anyway, for all these reasons, I'm including a seasonal link to The Storm Track.

Hopefully, they all stay way out in the Atlantic... close enough to produce some surf, but far enough away so that they don't ruin my house.

Bertha is out there brewing as we speak. While it won't threaten the oil rigs (or Cajun's trailer), it should produce some waves!