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. ;-)
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. ;-)
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2 comments:
Very nice! That's a 10 pt CL equivalent! Impressive, considering you're trading 25 shares :-)
@Jules Thanks! My focus has been on maintaining consistency and my entry/exit timing. The scaling up will follow as I progress. =)
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