April 6th

It felt good to get back to the paper-trading after Friday off, especially with my new 24"monitor to match my other one. I retired the 19" I had.
Despite a reasonably good day, I just never felt comfortable today...never sure of what was going on. And, boy did I miss some nice gains by getting out early after very nice entries. On the other hand, I got out of some trades with a profit just by "the skin of my teeth," as my mother used to say! I believe that big loss at the end of March is sticking with me. I was thinking about going live with real money this month but that will have to wait. Again, this is practice trading and any success at this is tempered by the fact that my emotions, my head, are not under control. Until I can do this without a second thought about losses or gains, I am going to stick with the fake $. Any anxieties I have paper-trading will only be magnified when I go to live trading.
I still feel that there is something in my analysis which I am missing. A pefect example is the big drop in SRS from 3:27 pm to 3:51 pm. This $3.35 cent per share move had ALL red candles (3-minute), not one reversal in it. Because I play a lot of reversals, these are the moves which terrify me. Clearly, I would rather ride momentum with moves like this; to stay on the trend and not go counter to it. So often, like on March 31st, I go against these uni-directional "downdrafts" and just get smoked. While I have managed to make overall gains, these moves are punishing because I cannot seem to consistently play them correctly. April will be an important month for me in this regard. I am going to try to spot these moves so I can go with them and keep an eye out for the reversals which have been my primary strategy of late. I want to become a well-rounded trader; playing comfortably long and short trends and catching the changes in direction. Only then will I be able to approach the success of Scott Farnham, the trader whom I wish to pattern myself after.
Another interesting thing I noticed today is that SKF now has shares to short on IB for the first time in quite some time. That is a clue as to what's going on with the financials in this market.
I played four stocks today and managed gains in all four, although the gains in RIMM and GS were negligable on a 2 for 3 win ratio.
20 for 30 success rate, 67% winners. $1.10 per share gain.