My day of paper-trading was one where I could not focus solely on the stocks because of more pressing things related to the day-job. I have let many of my administrative tasks lapse in favor of the markets and today I tried to do both to get caught up. I didn't do too badly considering my broken attention. The SKF was not moving very much today... the day range and the momo was not great based on other days. I t sure has changed from the month of March when I was just getting into trading the ETF's. Of course, sustained volatility like that only comes around every so often. I have a feeling that trading in the future will resemble more of what we see now as opposed to then, or even less movement/volatility. September 2008 through March 2009 was very unusual, for sure. Today and probably days in the future are indicators that I may have to go back to searching for ADR stocks rather than just being able to count on certain ones to move every day. Not sure about that, but my gut tells me it might be that way. Relying on movement in the financials and their ETF's have made trading so much easier in that no scans or searches have been necessary. Just punch up the SKF, SRS, FAZ,FAS, etc and go to work! We'll just have to see what the future holds. I really don't have much experience in the quieter market times to compare to. I know one thing, I'd really like to see the VIX above forty for the rest of my trading life! As for today, I had some good entries and I seemed to gauge direction fairly well. I just didn't stay with my trades long enough. Same old issue for me. I'm at the point where I'm ready to just take the chance that all my trades might stop out rather than take quick gains. It seems that many of the trades, if I were to let the trend develop, would offset the losers I would take getting stopped out on the trades where I normally take quick gains. I'm going to take a closer look at todays exits and measure them against the eventual reversal to see how much I gave up today. I'll post it if it is noteworthy.
7 for 7 winners, a 100% success rate. Gain of $366 in 4 hours of "inattentive" trading.
