no trading today

no trading today. had to push the reset button on the account and fill her back up after fridays bad trading. don't i wish it was just a video game!

i did see one trade in FCX today around 10:30 i would like to have taken. it probably would have more than made up for friday but, unfortunately, i my account fell below the magic number.

a nice short also presented itself after that consolidation around lunchtime.

i thought i had the possibility of trading odd lots but i think my broker is going to put the kabosh on that one. for some reason, if i use their web trading, i can trade odd lots but if i use the downloaded software it is a no. what is the difference to them?

i desire to trade odd lots to lessen my initial risk. .25 against you on 100 shares is $25. if my daily down limit is $100, that is only four bad trades. plus, .25 on most of the stuff i trade is nothing. i know some folks out there can time it well, but at this point i cannot. if i was able to trade odd lots and buy an initial 25, and then scale in to my desired price and size, i think i could trade better. i am always so worried about risk that it stops me from making money.

i spoke with tradestation today and they allow opening odd lot orders but their minimum charge is $1. so, if i was to scale into my first 100 25 shares at a time it would cost $4. that is fine, because it could save me $20-$50 depending on where I would really like to get into. by this i mean, if i opened a 100 shares with a stop .50 below, I am risking $50. if, on the other hand, i can enter the position 25 shares at a time while the stock trades around my stop area, that would be ideal and save me dough. there is one problem though...tradestation charges $1 for 100, $2 for 200, $5 for 500 and $8 for 1000.

lposition size 500: lets say the stock is a .50 but ideally i want in a the whole dollar level. well, i would like to scale into the first 100 as it approaches the whole dollar level. normally though, i would have to purchase 100 shares at market probably around .50 and have my stop at the whole dollar level. hopefully though, i can scale into the stock up to the whole dollar level and then have my stop set below probaly around .80 or so.

tradestation would cost 1+1+1+1 (first 100 shares 25 at a time)= $4 plus $4 for the next 400 shares= $8

lightspeed is .40+.40+.04+.40=1.60 for the first 100 then 1.60 for the next 400 + ecn fees so total probably around 2.50

so, you have $8 vs. $2.50

the problem though is that in order to trade odd lots i have to use a new web based trader which isn't as fast as my platform now. i also don't know if it updates p/l in real time. this could be good or bad because it is slowing me down, so i won't get so crazy with the orders.

the benefit of tradestation, although the commission is almost 4x higher, is that they have wonderful trade management. you can trade through an awesome trade matrix where all you do is click to place buy/stop/sell and then you drag your stop order to change price. that is pretty cool. it is like ninja trader. tradestation also has one cancel other orders, bracket orders, and etc...an unbelievable amount of great orders that i wish lightspeed had.

with lightspeed, as i get out of a position, my stops don't update in real time. so if the stock ever comes back to my stop, depending on how many shares i have left, i can actually have a flip of the position unintentionally

i am done writing and venting for now. just trying to work it all out.