Wow, a day of huge highs and lows for me personally when paper-trading the SKF and GS. To begin, my trade held overnight did pretty much what I expected and yielded a gain of $1.14 per share. In fact, at the open I added another position on to it which added another $1.04 per share gain... for a total of $2.18 on the trade in total. I learned a great deal about trading the open however! I clicked the transaction shortly after the opening bell because I had a very nice gain going. However, the trade was not executed until 7 minutes later. I lost most of the gain showing on the screen and was lucky to salvage a winner at all on the whole lot. This was incredibly frustrating. Well, it was to get worse from there. I was again trying to stick to the trend/momentum plays. I got chopped out/ stopped out consistently all morning to the point where I had lost all my gains from the overnight trade and was in the hole for about $2 - $3.00 per share! Talk about ugly reversals! Much like yesterday, the chop took me away from trying to play momentum and took me back to trying to play for reversals... it was what would be working in that type of action. With this change in strategy, I started to get a few winners, 7 out of 8, in fact. They were small gains and I was still down a bunch, but things were looking better. Then, the momentum came into the market and I was caught playing for reversals. At 2:10 pm, there started a drop in SKF that would have been a terrific short for a momentum play. Not for me though, I got caught on the wrong side of it and the market proceeded to "drop me on my head." I took a $3.55 per share loss! Ouch! At that point, albeit a bit late, I switched strategies and went back to trend/momentum trading again. I went 11 for 22 with a $ 4.73 gain and made back my losses of the day, finishing the day with a 98.4 cents per share gain. However, like yesterday, I am in a big position overnight. I didn't want to be, but I was unwilling to take the loss when I went against the trend in SKF during it'sbig drop into the close. So, with my success last night in fading a powerful uni-directional move, I decided to hold again. I'm currently down about $6.40 per share but I am counting on the trade to revert to the mean at open tomorrow. We'll see. This is a fairly reliable strategy. I just hope no news hits overnight to "drop me on my head again." For today, I am glad to escape with a gain, considering what went on. I really am undisciplined... all over the place. partly because I am playing two strategies so I can stay in the market all day, trying to profit from what the market throws at me. After all, this is training, not reall money trading. I need the practice in all facets of the game. For instance, today was the first time I tried to trade the opening bell. I learned something. Tomorrow, I'll try the same thing. This might get ugly though. I have a day job appointment which won't allow me to be here at the open... I'm going to try to change the appointment to 10:30 so I can trade that open position. If not, I'll just let it ride....
For the day:
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34 for 63, a 54% win rate. Gain of 98.4 cents per share.
