Coming into the end of December we were actually well positioned for the decline that came in the first two weeks of January. The only problem was that we closed out all our short positions the last day of December mostly to pad the month and our first year. (Feed the Ego) We closed 300 of SDS, 300 Short BA, and 100 Short GS all on the 31^st. Thinking that the first week of the New Year would be slow and uneventful I did not have a problem closing the positions. We also had both been planning on being out of town the second week of January on a trip to Texas and did not plan on having any positions on during our week off. Had that happened we would have avoided about 65% of our monthly losses which came during the second week of January. But, it just so happened, that Ainkurn’s wife had gotten sick and had to have surgery preventing him from taking the trip.

Positions were left on in MA and SPWR that no doubt came second to tending to his wife. The market got crushed along with our long positions and we lost about $5,800 on these two positions alone. We did let MA get away from us as our stop should have been closer than $195 and $192 with our average entry around $215. We intended to stay in the position if MA stayed over $200 which it had on the daily charts. The day we exited there was a massive move in MA, down over $10 in under an hour, which caught Ainkurn off guard and caused us to exit near the lows. The loss in MA accounted for most of our negative performance in the month. That just goes to show that one small mistake can case you a great deal of pain. We will have to pay more attention to our stops and not let trades get away from us.

Another trade that lost us a good deal of money was a long trade in RIMM. I entered the trade at what I thought was a good level and had a mental stop. The only problem was that it traded through my stop by about $3 dollars intraday and I did not realize it until it was too late. I ended up losing a lot more money than I planned on that trade and will have to be sure I stick with my stops even if I am hit intraday.

As far as leverage is concerned we were not over leveraged at any point during the month. We never had more than 50% of our capital invested at any one time. That leads to the final question of market trend. I felt confident we would go lower but was not positioned correctly to take advantage of falling prices. After my return from Texas it took a couple of days to get back in the swing of things. During that time the market had its huge drop over the holiday weekend and I put the brakes on any trades. From that point on I was behind the curve. I have been caught trying to short the market that last couple of days which added to our negative performance. I have had a handful of small losers and am still sitting on a few.

I also have been trading YM futures in an attempt to just add some small gains during times when I did not have on any swing trades, but I ended up losing almost $1,000 instead. In December I put on 15 swing trades with a profit of $5,000 and at the same time lost $1,800 trying to daytrade futures. I have realized that I do not have enough experience trading futures and cannot swing trade and trade futures successfully at the same time. I will be focusing all my time on swing trades from now on.

- Tradeitup

Had a few trades in YM that were all losers. I have not gotten used to using 50+ point stops to keep me in trades so I’m just losing money. A few limit orders that I had in this morning on the buy side never got filled and I missed a couple 50-80 point moves. I came down with a monster headache this afternoon and missed the big move up because I could not see strait it hurt so much. I probably would have been shorting the move any way so I’m probably a couple hundred to the plus side since I missed it. Here is the chart for today.

I put on one trade yesterday in the YM that turned out to be a good winner. It was the perfect trade in two ways: 1. I top ticked the entry and 2. The trade went my way immediately and never looked back. I should have added one more contract to the trade on the retest of the trend line and 12000 but never got the order out there. This is the first good winner I have had in YM in a few weeks. The market is wild and I am trying to keep my losses down until the market gets more stable and I get more experience trading in this environment.

Today started good with my first trade,short premarket, going my way. I added into the open and was able to pull out $155 on the trade. In hind site I should have held on longer and added on the spikes up but was not able to stick with the trade. As the market continued lower I once again got short on a move up and was able to catch a small move down. It was small because I got out way to early, instead of letting the trade go another 20 points in my favor. At this point I am up over +350 on the day, my first good up day since last Monday. From this point on everything goes to crap. I start putting on 2 contracts on each trade instead of the usual one and start moving my stops around trying not to get hit. Stupid. Then as the market continues up I keep trying to short the thing with more and more contracts. The 6th trade I put on I end up with 4 contracts short, adding 2 just before the market moves up 45 points in my face. I lose over $600 on that trade alone. I kept trying to force my will on the market. I have a problem with trying to determine, before hand, where the market will go and then just sitting around and waiting until it goes there. Stupid Again. I got short again at 13350, based on the 30 min chart, but did not get out when I was up $200 because I thought we would at lest pull back to 13290. So instead of getting out with $200 I got stopped out with $60. Stupid, Stupid, Stupid. I try and get short one last time just hoping the market would sell off in the last hour. No dice.

I only put on one YM trade today and only had one yesterday(not worth posting). I was cautious this morning with all the buying that was in the market and tried to wait until the buying exzausted and then get short. I got in about 10 min to early as there was one more gasp higer before the sell off the rest of the day. I am going to have to work on holding through these kinds of moves. If I had just checked the 30 min chart on the YM I probally could have held through that last move higher. Its been a long week and I am glad its over.