End of Day Journal (1-11-2010)

Waka waka. I am not sure what to say. Another gorgeous up day and above the target average. I am almost afraid to jinx this, but now I am up for last 5 out of 6 days since starting this blog.

Selling:

I sold out of both of the positions I was holding, one sold in early pre-market trading, and the second sold early afternoon. I would almost be ready to call both 'flukes' but when it comes to the stock market and trading - how do you measure a fluke? You make a decision and go for it and this is what happened. The stock that sold in pre-trading ended up closing the day down, which would have put my position at a loss. The other stock drifted down all morning, came back above even, drifted down again, and then finished strong. I sold $0.11 off of the high, and $0.05 off of the close.

Both of these stocks were relatively low volume stocks, and it is pretty amazing how the price can move around with 100 share trades. There were several times I debated selling while stock #2 was on it's way down; especially given that I had been plus an additional $0.10 from where the day started at some point on Friday. How many times have I had the gain, but held out for more, only to watch all profit disappear? Plenty of times. I wish that I could say that I was reading the signals and knew this would happen. But I didn't and I wasn't. My thought process hinged on two things today: not to sell on the down swing, and confidence in the initial purchase. This was all severely tested as the stock came up to +$0.04 for the day, to almost back down to the low again. I wish I should come up with some clever maxim for the day, but I am just not qualified. Keeping it real.

Buying:

I purchased into another position at the end of the day, another low volume stock, so I was hesitant. Only had two candidates all day, and in retrospect, the other finished more to my liking. I may watch it tomorrow morning as well and try to buy in late morning.

What ifs:

One of those rare, well finished days. What if I had a bunch more of these?

Time spent watching the market today:

About 40 minutes total.
I want to start tracking this to give myself a sense of the time commitment. This is a guesstimate - tomorrow I will keep a stopwatch handy and do my best with punching in and out. I work from home and I have a 3 24-inch monitor setup, I keep SD up in the background with current positions peeking from behind my work apps. This is the kind of day that I want as a trader - lets see if it keeps up.