End of Day Journal (6-15-2010)

Summary:

Hard to post this... Thoroughly got my butt kicked today: -$1241.61

I wiped out all of last weeks gains and the some. I didn't even look at TNA today. Here is how the profit side of things went:

The bounce corresponds with the one decent APC exit.

The goal here is no negative days. Not one every once in awhile -  none, nada, zilch. That is how good I want my trading to be.

I traded with confidence today. Yup - I got pissed (especially on the 1000 share > 70 tick unrealized and closed at a loss trade on APC), but in review, I had very few of what I would call poor entries. I had some awful exits - mostly bad luck (the aforementioned APC). And I had one good exit (APC). I think about 80% of my trades today were on APC.

Again - I don't think that I did much different today than I did last week. One thing I made a point of doing today was paying close attention to and trying to trade with the Q's and this is reflected in nearly every entry. It is plainly (and quite painfully) obvious that my idea of a good entry is not so good.

If I would of nailed the APC exits I probably would have been slightly above even today.

So now what?

I think I need to train myself to stop seeing so many good opportunities.

To be honest, looking back over the trades, I can't differentiate between the ones that worked and the ones that didn't and I am not sure what to do about it. I could probably eliminate 3 or 4 entries (AIG - too late, last BP, 2nd short on GME, 2nd short on RL), but based on what has worked for me in the past, I did fine on my entries. I think I would make every entry again.

This is very, very tough.

Work on my exit strategy? I don't know. I did not see the APC drop coming, I am not sure that anyone could have. That happened twice, but the second time I managed to scalp a profit.

Well - I hate to finish this entry without a solution, but I am at a loss. The only thing I can think of is to somehow become more judicious with my entries. With today's entries being perhaps some of the best I have done, that doesn't leave me with much. A little frustrating

I only have on more day of trading this week. Tomorrow afternoon I am headed to Flagstaff to cool off, get away from Phoenix, and work on my dissertation for a bit (which has been sorely neglected). This may serve as a good break.

I think I am going to limit my live trading for awhile, but I am not exactly sure how. It might just be slowing things way down, but to be honest, I do not know how that works with my plan (trade whenever I think I should) and personality. It might be back to paper trading, perhaps saving live trading for the run away tickers. I don't know. I will figure something out.

Feel free to contribute, criticize.... encourage =)

Details:

AIG New high - very late on the entry (-$74.05):

APC: Went long after the short was wrong. Doubled up 5 candles over. Saw something like 78 ticks unrealized on the 1000 shares. Did nothing but drop after the candle change and I ended up closing at minus a few ticks. Broke my heart. Went long again on the next candle and saw 92 ticks unrealized. I lost over 30 of that on the close. Chop city from there on out, with another try at a double up on the 11:05 entry, which closed at barely above the second entry. One more double up on the 12:20, this one close slightly negative. Then I couldn't find direction to save myself (-$235.73):

BP (-$38.32):

CF: nasty bit of work (-$1.28):

CREE (-$225.24):

GMCR: new high, reversed on the exit. With two stops I shouldn't be much over -$150; doesn't look like there was much slip, so I must have moved the stop back for some reason (-$253.63):

GME (-$41.08):

 NWSA (-$22.45):

OII (-$77.72):

RIG: short, stop, long, stop. Long again, and exited as the market dipped. Another try at a long and a tight stop (-$117.57):

RL: new low, tried twice (-$113.96):

VXX: I can't defend the second entry (-$40.66):