Selling:
Sold out of one position that was held from yesterday. Made 4 round trips on another that I had owned yesterday. 2 trips at +$300 gross, one trip that I typed the wrong sell price in at (-$10 + minus commission) and another at a $190 + commission loss. I could have kicked myself on the mistake... I changed the decimal and did not change the dollar side. Thankfully there was a bid right below where I had bought so the stock did not sell at list. On the other sale - I ignored my own rules and sold on the down draft - which happened to be a quasi-bottom. I bought back in at +$0.04 cents, which was another mistake.
Two things here - be CAREFUL! (which is nothing new), and OBEY THE RULES. I think the earlier part of the day contributed to both of these mistakes/decisions: I missed a +$790 sale on one stock which was a little frustrating, and I had made two round trips on the other stock at a very nice profit. I felt a lot of self-imposed pressure to make up for the missed high.
I have been there and done that - will I ever learn? Today's mantra: set your daily, call that a success.
Which today was - at $389!! But ya know...
Buying:
I mentioned the round trips. The last two round trips I was 'too-confident'. But that is a hard call. There was significant upside action and I waited as I had the other two times. But I missed it. The big mistake was the sell side.
What ifs:
Crazy day. I should have sold at the +$790, but I was expecting it to keep going up. It dropped for the rest of the day. I did stick to the rules on this one and didn't sell on the down... after hours trading suggest this was the right decision, but tomorrow will be the real test.
So I could have been up $1500 - absolutely - which was just incredible! It seems like these 'What if' type of days are becoming less frequent, which is another move in the right direction. (WHOOT!) At one point, I thought about selling everything at bid which would have put me at $1000 for the day. Wasn't meant to be.
All things considered, $389 is a great day - it is very close to the target average (which when made, I thought was completely unrealistic!). Being up so high and not capitalizing on it of course is a disappointment. It is crazy how quickly the internal sense of how much I should make changes. A couple of weeks ago, I thought $400 was completely unrealistic, today I hesitated at $1000. If I could do everything over, I wouldn't have set sells so high, I think it was forgetting the daily goal and expecting the price to keep going up; the last couple of days have definitely lent themselves to this.
Time spent:
About 3 hours... hard to take my eyes of off the 1 minute ticket window.
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