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.

I have been away from the computer screens for the longest stretch since my vacation last June. My wife has been sick since last Sunday with what we first thought to be a stomach virus. We went to the doctor several times but she didn’t seem to get much better. After running a few tests, it was concluded that she had gallstones and she had surgery to remove her gallbladder on Friday. She is doing great now, although still in a little pain. Needless to say, I have been incommunicado for the last few days.

I was scheduled to be gone this week with my brothers to Texas, but alas I am left here alone to manage the trading for the week. Well, today was a disaster. I guess I can’t blame it all on today, because most of the damage came from positions that we have had open for a few days. Coming into the trading session we had 1,500 shares in open positions, 700 short and 800 long. Here is the breakdown on the swing trades we had open… CEG(200 Long), MA(200 Long), MIL(100 Long), RIMM(100 Long), SDS(400 Short), SPW(300 Short), and SPWR(200 Long).

Being that I was out of the office most of the day Thursday and Friday I had to call in to get updates on our current P/L from my brother. I was pretty much out of the loop and not really tuned in to the market coming in to today. Therefore, I was not quite prepared for the bloodbath that ensued at about 9:00. Only 30 minutes into the trading day MA, RIMM and SPWR decided to have a race to see who could fall the quickest (FYI.. MA wins losing $14.27 from Open to Low with RIMM coming in a close second at $14.11). I was quickly scrambling to figure out how to stop the bleeding without getting stopped out right at the bottom.

I had to be in and out of the office several times during the day, so I took a good look at the charts and set my stops. I got out of MA at 195.08 and 193.48 and SPWR was triggered at 122.16 making up the bulk of our losses today. At first I was relieved to see that I exited MA before it went to 187.44 but then quickly upset that it ran all the way back up to touch 200. SPWR also staged a small revival before being killed once again to make new lows before rallying $4 into the close. What a crazy day. On the flip side, I did have the wherewithal to add to our shorts on the way down and curbed our losses a little.

Along with our swing trades killing us, my daytrading was terrible. I revenge traded with 300 shares of FSLR, and that wasn’t the worst mistake. I was short at 240.80 quickly holding $600 in profits that also quickly turned into $600 in losses. I ended up exiting the trade losing $28 and then it dropped 10 points where I could have made $3k. Oh well. On top of that I put on 200 shares in SRS that quickly went against me and somehow I was oblivious to the losses until I was down $800. What a great trade. And there there are the two YM trades that lost me just over $100.

So, to wrap it up, we lost almost two times the money in one day as we did all year last year. As of the close, we are net long holding DIA, RIMM, VMI and MIL. Oh yea, I can’t forget those 10 calls on DNA also. Here are the charts…

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.