Smoked Out

I have my loss limit set at $1000 now. If I lose $1000, I just can't place any more trades, my system locks me out.

I was out by 1:00 today.

Here's what happened.

The day started off fine, as I made some quick money on small long positions in LNN and EXM. However, by about 9:40, my luck had changed.

Even though the market was selling off in the morning, I was just shorting the wrong stocks. That is, I was shorting the strong ones. Shorting strength is just not a good idea.

I lost money shorting CROX early and then during the lunch hours, shorting VMI. Why did I short VMI, a strong stock? Because I was long LNN when it tanked out of the blue and so I thought VMI would follow. So, I got killed on both trades, my LNN long and my VMI short. Here are the charts.



So I got short VMI at around the same time because since LNN was tanking, I figured VMI would follow. Bad assumption.



Anyway, so as you can see, I covered a good portion of my position but I still had 400 shares short when it finally began to drop. When it got down to $88.20, my loss was less than $1000 again and so I took the opportunity to enter some new shorts. I was filled at $88.30. So I guess it's a little early to write this post.

The market looks to be dropping a little and this stock is finally acting weaker. It's 1:32 and I'm down $890. To be continued...

LATER...

Okay, so guess what, I finished at -$887. I should have walked away... instead I blogged like a lunatic and watched "The Dark Crystal" that Jim Henson movie from the early 80s.

I make $3, you get fun blog posts for free. Go figure.

Also, since I had time to kill, my daughter read me Fancy Nancy and Fancy Nancy and the Posh Puppy like, 400 times.

Back to the "markito." For fear of sounding like a broken record, I just want to point out that we rallied today but on very low volume. I don't want to sound like a "bearshitter" for fear of getting my "eyebrows punched off" by "the Fly," but if I was a bull I'd be a little concerned about the lack of volume in the market at these levels.

Also, one note. Since I did well last month I began to fund a second account with my company. It will be a swing account. The account I used to post here is now considered my "super long term" account. Like, I'm just not going to trade it, ever.

I will report my swing trades here from now on. I'm going to start extremely small with my trades as I've only thrown $2000 into the account to begin, but I hope to hold the stocks for weeks. We'll see. Hopefully some of you come up with some good long term ideas.

Anyway, here's the stats:

P&L, -$887
Best, UBB, $182
Worst, CROX, -$423

26,600 shares traded.
15 stocks traded, 6 winners, 9 losers.
129 trades.