End of Day Journal (9-24-10)

Summary:

Paper traded 200 shares:

EDIT: I had to remove the account performance jpeg. I must not have saved the correct one. The Excel charts are correct. I know I averaged right at 39% profitability today. The profit was over $1k.

Pretty incredible day - note the percent profitable is something like 39% and yet the loss was only $83. This is due to the much tighter stops I set today. There were a couple on DV that were quite large, but the DV trades were more about working on my timing and I let the stops ride to see what would happen.

Largest losses:

Again, DV takes the podium with the largest at $0.47/share.

Largest wins:

DV takes the honors here as well at $0.62/share.

About today: I know this is going to sound crazy, but I feel pretty good about it. Imagine that - another negative day and I feel like it was a day well spent. I learned a lot - the trading was more about learning and not a personal indictment/justification of me...

How can I explain this? Maybe it had something to do with the day's approach, which after yesterday's thoughts and journal became about setting tight stops assuming that if the stock has momo it will move away, if it doesn't then I don't want to be in the trade. The day became more about timing and trying to find key momo setups. DV is probably the best example (though it didn't always work). It was a day well spent and I think I learned a lot about what to do and what not to do. I feel like I am soaking the markets and info up like a dry sponge. Today was as fun as it has ever been.

Give me another year of this and maybe I will be consistently profitable. Heh.

A lot of charts today. Some with only one trade. Again - this exercise is primarily about me and this is my review: burning those patterns into my head. Several charts have no trades, when they came to my attention I either had too much going on or I thought that I was too far from the opportune entry. I listed them and placed green arrows on the current price for EOD review. Interestingly enough, I ended up trading some of them later in the day.

Gotta love the new image upload function. Fozz has been talking about it for awhile, but for some reason it was not showing up in my browser (strangely enough, it did once in Chrome but not FF). Made for much easier uploading today.

Enjoy.

Trade well.

Details:

AEM

Listed and not traded. Short was the call - and this is the approach for nearly all the lines, trading the breakouts/breakdowns:

XEC

Plenty of time on this one after I noticed it:

WLL

Fail - or wait for the double top:

PRGO

Neither of these would of worked out very well. Notice how close the first arrow is to the even dollar:

QCOM

A little room, but close to the top. Managed to profit on all the later trades:

SLB

Couldn't of played this much better:

PII

Right at the top, the 15 would of offered some clues:

SWK

NOV

MHK

Some room:

JOYG

ISLN

Plenty of room on the first arrow, the second marks when I noticed on new highs again - I had forgotten that I had it on the MA:

INFA

Top:

HOT

Some room - up to the even dollar:

GRMN

Somehow I missed the big volume bars:

ETN

Tight stops. I am not sure what happened on the 12:30, but it looks like I got stopped twice on it. The last long may have been on candle change:

EXPE

FLS

Not much happening, but I sure tried:

FSLR

EMR

DVA

More patience would of paid off here, but it sure seemed to like that $68.00 mark:

DV

Trades of the day. An experiment in momo.

I covered the long early - on the $48.00 mark.

In hindsight - I should of place the short on the $49.00 mark (1:05 candle). I thought about it, but I thought it was too far away and entered twice as it went up (limit orders). It then popped thru them both.

The 1:10 candle I tried the long with a tight stop. I would of come in short if it would of come back up.

The 1:15 candle was a long after the bottomside wick was made and I placed a limit cover above the prior open. Cha-ching.

The 1:20 saw me try long again, but I couldn't bring the stop up fast enough, so it was a wider than it should of been. After that trade I changed up the ATM for a $0.06 stop rather than the usual $0.50 stop that I have to manually move.

The 1:25 was long on the $68.00 mark. Tight stop.

The 1:30 was a technical glitch. The ATM strategy mucked up and I added twice at with bad stops and then was sitting uneven on the order. The remainder of the order got stopped on the 1:40. I left the stop wide on the remainder as an experiment.

After I was stopped on the 1:40 I went long with another wide stop (blame it on poor timing). The stop happened on the 2:15.

After the stop on the 2:15 I tried to go long again with a tight stop, and it triggered on the same candle.

Overall I lost on this but it was a good exercise:

CRM

BRK.B

BX

CE

Double top. Not a big mover, but the afternoon was full of these:

CECO

BJ

BIDU

BID

BHI

The green arrow was on the largest candle until my exit:

ATI

I closed several positions over this time. No clear signal on this one and I should of stayed in:

BAX

Here was one attempt at timing on fast momo. For some reason I picked long on the candle change, the stop was small enough to reverse, but against the rules, so I waited. Heh:

BEXP

Another missed entry - largest candle of the day, and then I get out right before the momo:

BG

APA

AMZN

I have been getting burned on this stock. Too busy to grab the last outbreak:

ALTR

Not a lot of movement, but things just clicked:

AIR

Not a big mover (about $0.20 from the arrow), but the signal to get out is there:

AFL

Flat:

AGU

The red diamond marks the largest candle of the day - I didn't notice it until I actually exited:

TNA

I had the right idea for the afternoon, but was reading the Q's for the exit. Strangely enough there was some divergence - I missed out:

TZA