End of day journal (1-26-2010)

What a month this is turning out to be.

Selling:

I sold 5 positions today, one a partial pending sale from yesterday, 2 where 2 round trips at $210 each, and the third was a repeat of one of the round trips that sold after hours, another $200. The fifth was the position entered yesterday that ended up falling out of the screener criteria the last 15 minutes of yesterday.

Buying:

The three round trips, and another repeat entry on a round trip.

What ifs:

The position that sold after market hours came out with an earning surprise 30 minutes after market close, bumping the price $1.65 over my sell. Heh - if only I had done the usual bump up for after hours. Oh well - $200 is $200.

Obviously 3 big losers today, which is a bummer. One was the position that fell out of the screener yesterday. In retrospect, I should have sold right away - for all intents and purposes, it was a wild card; I really had no idea what to expect and was my usual optimistic self. This should have been a definite no-no. The second position is one that I should not have bought as well - it is a re-entry on a stock that had met criteria some time ago, then was listed again in subsequent days, but fell out. In fact it fell out again today. I think the third position still makes some sense.

I really need to come up with more of a definitive sell strategy: something that makes sense and something that keeps me from chasing the intra-day highs and lows. This is similar to what happened over November and into December - that is, holding onto stocks longer than I should have. How do I balance this with what happened at the beginning of January  - that is, when holding them actually worked out?