messy charts, i know. what a pain in the ass. i can't copy just the chart image as i can do on my desktop. so i need to erase all the unnecessary junk. i had a chance to trade today from my hotel room. i am trying to get the setup correct on my laptop. its definitely different than my three 22's combined with my one 28 screen. but, it helps me simplify what i am doing. i tried playing the momo and either did not time it right, couldn't hold on through the drop, or didn't hold on long enough. probably the same story as every other new trader. the best trade i had was with POT. the last trade, i decided to walk away and not pay attention, let the stock do its thing and it worked out. obviously, i should have walked away for a longer time, ha!

too freaked out to hold on. then tried to short it as momo seemed to stall. few cents too early.

execution chart

wow. lightspeed now lets me see my executions on their charts. 2.5R. stop was @ .66 below previous candle low of .67

tried to trade today

i was going to post my trades but the internet at the hotel won't let me upload. i will try tomorrow at a different hotel. i traded wfmi as it was breaking lows and bcrx. nothing happened. lost $30. part of my problem is my scanner won't work in canada. we will see what happens when i get back to the states. but then, i am heading to mexico. probably shouldn't be trading at all but i was bored. i am waiting to get out of montreal and head toronto, but i need special permits.

another hard day of trading. glad to be going to make a paycheck for a few weeks so i can make some dough.

another hard day

another tought day for me. gross positive, net negative by about 10 or so bucks. can't seem to focus. my head is not in the game. most likely because i am working on a side project right now and trying to get everything together for that. i only have one more day of trading before i leave for a couple months, we'll see how it goes.

this had to be one of my worst days trading. sub-conscious self sabotage. somehow i would up with 400 POT. looking at the orders, they all didn't go off at one time, so honestly, i don't know if i was accidentally hitting buttons. look at that 13:24 order, exec 86, order 86.10...WTF. so before i knew it, i was down 90 bucks. i should have cut my losses at -12, go figure. my out was .73. sold half at .87 because i didn't want to wreck myself. got out the rest as it ripped through my stop price. then, i shorted it and got chopped out as well. bought some ICE, worked out okay, i was thinking it would go to 95.25 but never made it. shorted RIMM, late to the party. bought RIG, late to the party. i was just trading bad today. YIKES!

not too focused today. bad trade in aig. went to close position but ended up shorting 300

made a couple decent trades and was going to call it a day. then this crazy FMX went nuts and i watched it the whole time and finally decided i'd give it a shot, it dropped that fast in 5 seconds. always late to the party. next time must pull trigger earlier. it's all good, worth the shot.

just working the trades. should have held, what else is new. have to wait for the momo

seemed like a long, hard day today. my eyes are burning. tried to find the momo, but each time it came it seemed to leave fairly quickly. left alot on the table with RIG and then tried to make up for with FCX which did end up working. i have to learn to hold longer and buy a few more shares.

tyring my hand at waiting for the momo. i wanted to buy APPL around .61 but there was no momo, but then it ran. i picked it up as it pulled back from highs. POT i was trying to buy as a bounce off of yesterday's highs. then, it didn't seem to be working so i shorted it, just playing the chop. my real momo play of the day was IBM. big volume, breaking lows, i actually got into it for 600 shares, holy cow! it was more of an accident though. i was saying to myself lets get into this stock big time and i hit my tier 5 key, then when i wanted to add to the short a few minutes later i didn't change my tier size, and wound shorting 500 for a total of 600. it preceded to run up to 120 level, which scared me, but i held. i got out of the first 300 very quickly because it was too large size for me to take on. then i tried to slowly take off the rest. the final 100 i told myself to hang onto, and i tried, my mental stop was at .88 but when it rallied up and down a few times, i just got out at the low of the day. the stock went on to crumble as i am looking now. live and learn.

i think i am the one preventing myself from making money. need to keep focused, take slightly larger share size and not be in fear of this larger share size, that is the problem. i am scared to lose $40, i don't know why.

another thing, i will be heading off again to get the "paycheck" for a few months, starting in early october. it doesn't help with me coming and going. before i left, i was extremely focused. now that i am back, i know i am leaving again and it's hard for me to concentrate. but, it's nice to earn some money now and again, since trading isn't doing that for me at the moment. one day i hope to look back at all this and say wow, look how far i've come. time will tell.

okay day. tried to hold my positions in X and WLT but had a hard time due to the chop. i just closed both positions because i wasn't willing to let .50 cents go on WLT and both were really doing nothing. in the end, X would have made money, but WLT would have lost it for me. then in the afternoon played an ipo AONE. worked out okay, wish i didn't get scared out of the first 100 from .07. take my profitable day.

started off good then got bad. i respected stops but they were too wide. also, when a stock doesn't trade that well, such as PWRD, i need to just hit the bid instead of using these super smart orders. i wound up getting out .10 below because the super smart didn't work. bought pwrd as it was breaking highs, then got out. noticed that it bounced off the 20 sma on the 5 min everytime it broke highs, so i took the trade again. this time it didn't bounce of the 20, so what do you know.

don't even want to post this one, but i must remember the bad days. got out of btu at the same time i was down the exact amount in pot. basically, break even. then POT went on to cause a bad day for me. my stop was .69 but instead i bought more. (YIKES). did not respect my stop. i belive that maybe the first time i have oone that, and obviously it didn't work out. then i got back into POT, callint it my angry trade. i was up some at .99, thinking it would get over 95 but there was a big refresher at .99. should have got out there but didn't.

lesson: respect the stop. don't angry trade. also, i need to be in a few different trades. BTU worked well. was also watching JPM, FCX, and WYNN. all would have worked well but instead i concentrated all my energy on POT. i have to have at least 2 positions on, maybe 3 at a time.

back in the cockpit

got back today, but my head wasn't that focused. it's hard to get back in the rhythm after being away for a few weeks. took a few trades with aig but i am done for the day now. didn't want to push my luck.

spiderscan

on my time off from trading i have been playing with some new scanning software that i found at the amibald blog. it is called spiderscan and it's pretty cool. it aggregates all the gapping stocks, from finviz, td ameritrade, prophet, briefing and some other websites. then you can export them right to quote tracker. then with quote tracker you can of course sort by gap size, range (i use this to find stocks that are at their 38% retracement levels), or i sort by how much volume they are doing that day. quote tracker is awesome and i use it everyday for my watchlists and for my charts. i would pay for it, but i don't need to. if you have a td ameritrade account, it is free.( i used the product before td ameritrade bought them, and the service is still as good as ever) if not, i think it's $60 for a year. then you can use your broker as the quote feed. quote tracker can get quotes from many brokers such as td,scottrade,iq feed, the list goes on and on.

as some of you may know, i also use trade ideas, which is an awesome product but, it doesn't always catch all the gappers. i don't know who said it, either trader x or wall st warrior, but they get their gappers from a few different sources because one source may miss one, and that might have been the good one on the day. it happened to me a few weeks ago, where i saw at the end of the day OSK and it had never come up in the morning scan. but when i rescanned at the end of the day it came up, go figure.

the point of all this, is that these are great products which are very inexpensive and save alot of time. think, if you had to get your gappers from briefing, finviz, and prophet and then type them in seperately into quote tracker or copy/paste over to quote tracker. no matter what, this is going to take 15-25mins. and it's annoying, and you may type the wrong symbol. with these products it's done fast. with trade ideas it automatically fills out my portfolio windows with the gappers on the day. one window for gap up, one for gap down. with spider scan, all i need to do is highlight the stocks i want to move over, and hit the space bar. there are advantages to doing it either way. i like that with spider scan i can exclude some stocks, where with trade ideas i would have to delete them after they showed up in my portfolio window. and if i don't turn off the gap scans in trade ideas, it will put that stock back in the portfolio window later in the day.

if this is all crazy confusing, sorry. ask questions.

http://www.quotetracker.com/

http://spiderscantool.blogspot.com/

working

gone for a few weeks working on a marketing project.

Embracing uncertainty

i don't agree with everything in this article but i think it is a good read. i agree with embracing the uncertainty, either it's going up here or it's not, vice versa. believe in the probabilities of the setup. i can't remember how i found it but here it is....

http://carlfutia.blogspot.com/2009/08/here-is-first-of-two-post-by-fellow.html

i haven't read part two yet but here you go....

http://carlfutia.blogspot.com/2009/08/galdiator-x-speaks-part-ii.html

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made just one trade today. seemed difficult to gauge any direction in this market til lunchtime. then we got a little move. i checked my week and realized that it was a positive week. also, last week was positive as well. going from losing almost everyday for my first two months to being positive two weeks in a row feels great.

the downside to all of this, is right as i am getting a hang of reading the markets and identifying the momo, i have to go travel for the next few months for work. i am a contract employee and my company calls when they need my help on a project that i always work. the good thing is, i will be earning money to make up for the losses in my account as well as putting some money in the bank so i don't have to work when i get done with the contract. i can just trade full time as i have been for the last 2 months.

i plan on wathcing the markets when i have a chance to keep up with the feel of the level 2 and time and sales but i don't plan on trading much. i might have a break from sept 20 til october 8th or so, so most likely i won't be posting until then.

50% retracement, yesterdays low, 20 sma, red bar. i liked it. could have held on longer but SPY but in a green engulfing candle so i figured i take my money and run. also, during the lunchtime consolidation i was thinking about shorting it, or longing it because it was now above the 20 sma. i guess long was the way to go. just trying to stay green for the week.

playing a set up my friend does. minimum 8 red bars down. then you wait for a green bar. well, we didn't wait and i got shook out the first time. though, for the first time, i had brains to get back in along with some persuading from my friend. i was looking for .50 but couldn't wait. i have to learn to be patient. it really is amazing. you can sit in a losing trade for an hour, but you can't sit in a winner for 10 mins. actually, i need to "own" that statement as the meditation cd would say. therefore, I can sit in a losing trade for an hour but I can't sit in a winner for more than 10 minutes. though, if i had sat in them to long it looks like they would have become losers. i would say another good day, especially after being down big (for me) right as i put on my first trade. i hate missing those moves in aig but i know i would have piked out for .30 cents. must remain focused and watch time/sales and level 2.

came in late today. saw WLT breaking lows and breaking down from a long consolidation. it trades pretty orderly so i shorted it. also, saw RIG breaking down. a couple good trade. wish i had a few more shares. exited because i had .31 and .18, which are big moves for me to catch with no pain.

this was the trade. if i would have taken some off at .95 (instead i had an order at .90 that didn't get hit) then i would have felt comfortable giving this trade to .30 which was the prior breakout. but i didn't get out of any, and i didn't want to sit in an .18 loser, even though that isn't so far away. i need to stop concentrating on the p/l and look and the loss per share, i.e. .18 vs $18














just scalping this one all day. pushed my luck one too many times at the whole. i think this afternoon we tried to make up for the drop we missed right at the end of lunch but it was unsuccesful. i ended up giving back my day in this one, but i thought the risk reward was worth it. i was risking .10 for a .40 move.

looked like a great retracement.