I intended to have a post up on Friday about how the week went but I just did not get it done. Last week was a good week for me. I was able to pull in about $800 in gains for the week. I stopped doing daily recaps and I’m behind on updating TradeLog, which keeps up with all my transactions, so I am not exactly sure how much I made but $800 is close to the correct amount. I had a few really good trades and only made a few mistakes. One of the things that I did really well last week was to be very carefull not to over trade. The only day that I did over trade was Monday and it made me sick. I had found the MA trade over the weekend and made good money on it on Monday but gave most of it back with a lot of small losers. My win percentace was very low and I decided I would not let that happen again. So I was very careful throughout the rest of the week to not take just any trade that I thought might work. I got back to using limit entrys( with did keep out of some winners) but it is very much my stlyle of trading, and allowed me to be more selective with my trades. I only had one down day which was on thursday, and I was able to recognize very quickly that it was not a good day for trading and I shut down early for the day. My only problem is not holding on to winners long enough to get the maximum return on the trade. But that is a problem I will accept in the short term and will just contine to work on my confidence and trade setups.

I am back from vacation and getting back into the swing of things. Because my condo had no internet access, I did not trade last week and hardly even checked in to see how the market traded. It was a nice break from the markets and by far the shortest 6 days at the beach I have ever experienced. Usually, I am ready to be home after just a few days but I think I could have stayed another two weeks. I did spend some time thinking about my trading and how I had gotten to the point that I am at right now. I thought a lot about why I had chosen to attempt to trade for a living and about some of my original ideas about the market from years ago.

 Originally I approached the markets like an Investor looking for strong companies with good names (Read: GE, DE, IBM etc.) That approach lead me to study stocks on longer time frames and revealed why I wanted to learn to trade. Stocks that were in the middle of strong bull moves would always have periods where the stock would run hard for a few months but then there were always months where the stock would trade sideways. I thought that if I could figure out when a stock would run and when it would consolidate then the superior returns of long term Investing could be beaten. This could be accomplished by buying when a stock was running and selling when it began to consolidate and then moving that money into another stock that was making a strong move. This is not easy to do and would have been very hard to accomplish in the last 1.5 years with market conditions and my lack of real trading experience. But that very simple idea is what got me into trading and is still part of my makeup as a trader.

 Like I have stated on this site before, my trading approach has changed many times over the last 1.5 years, trying new styles and trying to adapt to a market that was noting like the one that I learned so much about from 2003 to the beginning of 2007. I don’t think I could have chosen a worse time to become a full time trader. I said all that to say this: I am still somewhat lost with my trading but I believe that being lost is part of the process. According to this link on HPT’s site there could be a whole lot more “being lost” in my future. But through all that there some signs of hope. Today I made one of the best trades I have made in a long time. Although I did not make a lot of money it was the planning, executing and confidence that made the trade so good. Over the weekend I came into the office and looked over some charts and updated my software. During my chart searching I came upon Mastercard and liked the daily chart setup. So I then switched down to the 30 min time frame and immediately thought that MA could run big on the open. The chart setups were very nice and I knew I would be buying MA on Monday. I came in this morning and looked over the chart again and thought that there could be a shake out move early and that I should wait for that and then buy. I executed the plan and entered MA at 289.50 with 100. My original plan was for 300 shares but MA turned around from my original entry so fast I could no pull the trigger on the other shares. My original target exit was at 297 but I never even got close to that. I exited the trade around 293 for about $375 in gains. Although I did not hold on long enough, have enough shares, and did not make the $2,000+ I should have, the trade felt really good and reminded me of my original ideas about the market. Research, Planning, Solid stocks with low risk entry’s, executing a plan with good money management, and having the confidence to hold onto a winner. Those are the things that helped me find good stocks and good trades back when I first got started with my $2,500 in 2003 and are the ideas that are at the core of my trading philosophy. I plan on focusing on these ideas and trying to find a way to apply them more actively in my approach to trading. In short: I plan on getting back to….. Basics.

The past few weeks have been difficult trading for me. I cant remember the last good up day I had where I really felt like I was able to catch some good moves. It seems like every day I just come in and churn my account… make a little lose a little. I ended last month down just over $1,500 which I guess is acceptable considering this market. Most of my losses came from two swing trades Short the Market and Short Oil. The Oil trade just flat did not work and I got stopped on my market short on 5/19 the day the market ran up through most of the day and then sold hard in the last hour or so. The DOW then proceeds to fall over 650 points in 4 days. I have also had to try and adjust to working alone every day now. It is a lot different without someone else’s opinion on your market ideas. I aso mentioned that I am trying to change some things about the way I trade and have experimented with different things over the last few days. When you combine all these things it can only lead to one thing… Frustration. I am just burnt out on trading and this crap market!! Good thing I am leaving to go on vacation tomorrow. I will be in Panama City for a week. There is no Internet access in the Condo so there will be no posting or trading during next week. All surf and sun. I will however use this time to reflect on my trading, consider new trading ideas and maybe try and find a way to turn this sinking ship around. Good luck to everyone next week.

Tradeitup

I was just going to put a post up to let everyone know that I am still alive and will try to get back to regular posting in the next couple of days. I am still trading, although it has been bad of late, and currently have a lot going on. I also wanted to leave my bros. post on the top of the site for a few days, which is a good excuse for my laziness. Not only do I have a lot of personal things going on, I am also reevaluating my trading. This includes time frames, setups, money management and my style. I may have to do a whole revamp of my trading on the scale of how DT has changed in the last few months. I also maybe changing up the site some,  by stopping the daily recaps and change to a weekly recap with a post about how I traded during the week. I really want to keep the site going and try and keep the readers coming to the site. On top of all this, I am having some technical problems with the blog which I have not resolved and am also attempting to take the two monitors from my brothers computer and have a 4 monitor setup.  So that is what is going on here and I will try to keep updates coming as things change.

Tradeitup

Ah the joys of being an idiot from time to time. You know, after almost two years of active daytrading (only 1 year and 6 months full-time) you would think that those novice mistakes (like accidentally doubling down when you meant to close a position, or buying 1000 shares instead of 100) would be behind you. But today I proved that those mistakes will haunt you much longer than you think.

I came in today planning on only trading for a few hours in the morning and taking the rest of the day off. I got to the office 1min after the market opened and saw that CSIQ had reported earnings and gapped up. I had a good feeling that FSLR would be a good long given the right entry.

FSLR has had strong resistance around the $288-$289 level since the second test of $305 early this month. From the gap point on April 30 and the test of that level, sellers have been coming in and keeping FSLR in check. However, you can see a bullish setup in the MFI with higher lows for the first 10 trading day. A nice ascending wedge had formed coming to a point with about a $5 range. With CSIQ‘s earnings release, FSLR gapped above the resistance level on the open which really made a strong case for the $300 level to be tested again.

Taking this into account, I was looking to be long on the open. I was given a beautiful opportunity when FSLR sold off from $293 to $290 and proceeded to trade sideways for a few minutes. I wasn’t getting much of a signal out of the MFI this time, but I knew there was a good chance for an early morning rally. I have been using Book Trader the last few weeks to try and get better limit entries, and this time it cost me. I waited for the right entry, watched the bid/ask and then quickly jumped in. Little did I know, I made the classic novice mistake of taking the wrong side of the trade. About 30 seconds after entry I figured out what I had done and luckily I was able to exit the trade with +$5. But it cost me. After making that mistake my confidence was a little low, and I couldn’t get myself to reenter the trade on the right side. FSLR quickly ran up to $295.50, leaving me behind. My last two trades were very straightforward, positive divergence on the MFI coupled with some sideways price action. I made around $275 on these. Here are the charts.