Fleet Foxes, "Tiger Mountain Peasant Song" (live)

Both upcoming NY area shows sold out... if any of you know how to get tickets, please write me. Seriously. These guys are so damn good. They're gonna be huge.

Trimming The Fat

I had a couple of decent trades today, in JRCC and ATW specifically. However, I want to focus on something that is definitely holding my P&L back... the shitty little losses I keep amassing.

In order to better focus on eliminating these shitty little trades, I'm going to start reporting my broken down P&L. I'll report my winners and losers as usual, and add up the total dollar amount of each.

Like, for example, I jumped the gun in AET, WCC and BG today. My three losses in those stocks added up to about $150. Nothing disasterous to be sure, but when I'm making $200 a good day, I have to figure out where all the headwinds are.

I've been over my inability to hold winners... that's been a recurring theme of this blog since, well... forever, and my most obvious failing. My other (within the current style I'm trading) is my trade selection. I'm just taking too many shitty trades still, without crystal clear entries and exits. I need to just stop that and focus on the 3 or 4 excellent trades that seem to present themselves each day.

Anyway, my best stock of the day was JRCC. It was my first trade in a 4-letter name with my new company and it was very satisfying. Mostly because it worked so quickly and easily. There was no retest of my entry or chop. It just cratered at my entry point. Of course, I covered it all too early.



My other decent trade came in ATW, another HCPG play. This was good just because once again, it worked right away. The reason I sold "early" instead of waiting for the $112 target was because the $OSX was so weak all day. I rather doubted the stock would reach the target, so I just took the easy money.



Anyway, I've been treading water the last few days with trading and my focus has been elsewhere. But I want to finish the month strong. There are 3 trading days left, and I'm setting the (sadly) ambitious goal of $300 a day average so I can hit the $2000 mark on the month.

With the Russell Rebalancing on Friday however, anything can happen. I'm still undecided about whether I should go at it lunatic style and take massive risk, or if I should play it close to my chest and take my small gains for the month... we'll see.

Here's the stats:
P&L, $225
Best, JRCC, $256
Worst, BG, -$51

4000 shares traded.
3 winners for $409.
6 losers for $188.

Virtual Office, -$2525. Dow, +4.40, 11,811.83.

Me, $226 on 4000 shares traded.
OBAT, vacation.
Denarii, -$86 on 6400 shares traded.
Tokyo, $-2665 on 961 shares traded.

FED day! Yay! (silence...)

I hate FED days, as do most traders in my office. It's just this expectation overhanging trade all day long... that said, the usual suspects in the RO made size. One dude just made 10 points shorting RIMM... and as another ROer said, "the rich get richer."

I don't have any stats for the RO today.

Tokyo got smoked. He had some swing positions that he decided to let go. It happens, but it sucks when it does.

Anyway, here we are mostly through June with a huge event coming on Friday. The suspense builds. Hopefully now that the FED is out of the way, the VO can look forward to some good trade for the next few days to close the month strong.

Summer Songs

We've hit that time of year where it seems like it's 80 degrees and humid everyday. Naturally, there are songs that reflect this type of weather quite nicely.

Below, for your listening pleasure, I've added The Skygreen Leopards, "The Supplication of Fireflies" and The Zombies, "Beachwood Park" to my music collection. As a reminder, you can find all the music I've ever posted to this blog at my Imeem page, or, just click on the labels on the right-hand toolbar.

Anyway, any songs that remind you of summer? Put them in the comment section.

As far as trading goes, I had a decent morning and now I'm gonna go out into the sun to continue with the property clean-up while I wait for the FED numbers at 2:15pm.

My best stock of the day is JRCC, which I caught a nice short on... perhaps these 4-letter stocks will help me out afterall...

Enjoy the music.