Week of Trading Wrap Up and a One Time Snapshot Summary

I have to say this week started out iffy, but turned out good in short order. My trading mistake, AKA Walter Energy, had moved against me by several points and I had failed to exit when i should have earlier. I knew that Monday would be the day to either exit and take my painful medicine if it continued to climb. So when it had gapped up by 4 points Monday morning, I didn't panic, but knew i was going to have to start closing out my position at the end of the day.

As fate would have it, I was saved by the Bear as the stock reversed course and gave back all its morning gains. The rest of the week went pretty smoothly by comparison.

Friday morning with the market in a major gap down with the Japan tsunami report made me feel very uneasy about being long, and decided to closed my CF stock and put positions to go flat and wait.

When I resumed trading I mismanaged or maybe I should say "mangled" my new trades and would up giving back the lion's share of the profits I had. I was way too focused on expecting trending breakouts and not planning for ranging moves. The market can be such a tease- it sure seems like when I correct follow my ranging rules the market breaks out and I lament over the extended move I missed. Then if I plan on breakouts, the market ranges and I wind up giving back gains. In this case, i just waited too long and missed the obvious signs to exit earlier.

All I have left is one small short position in WLT, which was all I was willing to risk over the weekend. This market is poised to move strongly either up or down, and it's highly news driven right now.

I decided to make a snapshot of my trades for the week, but will only do this once. It takes time, and I know myself too well, and would likely eventually forget to remove my account number or do some other oversight and wind up setting myself up for ID theft. Perhaps I'll do a weekly summary if I do decide to keep a running log.

At least this time you can compare the trades with the pulses I made during the week to see if there's truth in advertising. ;-)

I'm a Hybrid Trader

In the day trading world, you typically have two groups of people - those who scalp many smaller moves throughout the day, and those who trade longer time frame moves, which may occur only once or twice a day. On an even longer term, you have swing traders who may have a position open for several days.

I prefer to combine all methods - initiating a trade when I believe there's a longer term move happening- preferably long enough to qualify for a swing trade. Once in the trade, I can then actively manage it by adding to or reducing my position as the stock does mini-reversals in the shorter time frames as it moves towards my longer term target price. So in a sense, I'm day-trading my swing trade. The benefit of trading this way is if I screw up on the day-trade part with a bad entry, there's a good chance I can be saved by the longer term trend which is moving in the same direction.

By day trading the swing trade, I can extract more profit rather than wait for the target to be reached while the stock is oscillating up and down. It also ensures profits are locked in throughout the main trade.

Trading Update with Bonus:

This will also appear in my xanga blog (http://soullfire.xanga.com/)

I covered my last position in Amazon in the morning, a bit too soon I might add - and re-shorted on rallies. It was trending up so shorting gains were reduced, but I was not yet willing to go long.

Closed my last position during after-hours as I think Amazon could still go lower, but it could also reverse and start heading back up strongly. Plan to day trade on the short side until the up trend is confirmed- then I'll go long.

After getting bruised by Walter Energy for several days during its run-up, today marks the first time adjusting my position in the stock was profitable per my average price in. Maintaining a position...

Now for the bonus - a snapshot of my trading log for the day:

Still trading smaller sizes while I work on fine tuning my trading/timing strategy as well as precision in entries and exits.

Time to Fire This Up Again

It's been awhile since I've posted anything here. Much has changed since my last post. For one, I have undergone pretty intense self-training in the science-art of short term trading and after foraging in the wilderness for a good period of time, I have now finally come out feeling like a brand new person with new skills and insights.

The investor/trader who posted here last May has been replaced by an improved version with a new mindset and plan. =)