Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Contact Info

I'm not too good at keeping this blog up to date, I will try to post from time to time, but if you would like to reach me, my email is capital_preservation@yahoo.com

If you haven't read Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, I would suggest reading it. If you have read it, read chapter 5 again. That chapter for me, has been the best piece of reading for my trading in a long time...... and then read it again.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

07/22/08

+339
37k Shares

With the gap down this morning, I was looking for a long entry. I took a look at AAPL and saw it made a pretty good move down right off the open, I looked for the fade, jumped in long at 9:32 with 100 shares, and as it moved up through another couple hundred on. It worked out well, but probably should have added more on at the start and held at least 100 or 200 throughout the day. I traded it a little later on when it was breaking high around 2:30

AMX was a nice short that I got into late morning kept trading around the position getting in and out, should have just held the stock. I ended up exiting the trade at 11:35 on the bounce. It went down over a dollar more.

I took pretty big losses in TXN and MRK in the afternoon. I put on a decent size position short in MRK and then 3 minutes later news came out on it. It only moved 15 cents, but was quick enough for me to exit my position. Also had 1k shares in TXN that just stopped working shortly after 2:30.

I wished I watched CME a little closer this afternoon, missed the large rally completely, I tried to get into it this morning at the 340.xx area but my limits weren't hit.

Overall, I traded pretty poorly today, yet again getting in and out of positions too quickly and not holding long enough.

Friday, July 11, 2008

07/11/2008

($1,406)
37k Shares

After a fairly solid day yesterday, came in a little over confident today trading some larger size than I usually do. I started off the morning going long GS, LEH, MER, JPM. All of them worked, except GS which decided to sell off pretty hard I held on for the entire sell off and was down over a point on 600 shares, I felt it would probably return back up because the rest of the financials were doing well as well as the market.
I ended up getting out as it was pulling back up when I really should have just held it as it continued going further up. Oh well.
I had another big looser when I was long MON and just before 10:30 it decided to sell off over a point along with the market, with me in it! great fun I tell ya.

The day started going downhill pretty quick when I was fairly heavy long at 10:15 when some news came out on FRE and FNM and the markets went into a free fall. I was down very close to $2,000 but scalped FRE and FNM to the long side in the early afternoon to make back some of my losses.

Today was a pretty solid losing day, I'm trying my best to not lose more than $1,500 on a given day, but usually not more than about $800. I'm aiming to have my winning days double the losing days. We'll have to see how it goes.

I will be off all of next week, so best of luck to you all, and I will post when I get back the following week.

Thursday, July 10, 2008

07/10/2008

$1,005
21k Shares

It's been over a year since I've written in this blog, but after joining the virtual trading room, I thought I would start to post more comments to try to keep my thoughts in check and hopefully look for areas on improvement.

LEH was the stock of the day this morning, I managed to short it a couple times during the sell off at 10am, but was only at 25% of the share size I wanted to be at and didn't hold it anywhere near long enough. I through on a few shares later in the day short at 1:00, as the market was running up, but the financial stocks in general were weak, so thought I would give it a shot, it worked!
AA was another stock that worked well this morning, I got long pretty quick off the open and held for 50-75 cents before selling it all.

The biggest loss I had of the day was MON, I got long around 9:45, and the stock fell apart and ended up losing just over 300 on it.

With the rally into the close, I'm not sure what I will have planned for tomorrow, I've wanted to be long for the past couple days as I didn't think we had enough weakness to the short side, but the sell off mid afternoon today has made me re-think a few things.

Friday, June 22, 2007

+80
3,200 shares

With the gap down pre-market I was looking to go long off the open for the fade, but kept in mind that we have been going down for the past couple of days so it was very possible it would reverse on me, and it did. I jumped into SPY and GS right at the pivot level after the open and took a quick 0.50 in GS before it reversed back down and ended up taking a loss in SPY as it sank downwards. At this point it was time to get on the short side of things.



At about 10:45 there was a fairly big push downwards but I missed it so waited for the pullback which came almost immidiately, so I entered SPY again short at 151.18 only for it to continue up and hit the pivot line again, at which point I exited the position, was not thinking cleary there.

DE was a good trade today. I entered with 200 shares long at 124.55 at 9:45 because the market had sold off but DE was still holding strong, held this for 0.60 and exited at 124.75, way too early as I should have at least waited for the R1 resistance level. Oh well...



I was pretty pissed about SOHU today as it had been strong all day and was looking to get in it towards the end of the day. I jumped in just after 2:35 at 29.50 and was looking for a run up to previous highs, I ended up getting stopped out 29.40 and then watching it run up 40 cents. Another thing I need to work on loosening up my stops.