November 16th

I had a few minutes at the end of the day to look in on the markets. I decided to watch RIMM in anticipation of a practice trade...

I felt that RIMM had found bottom of the afternoon minor-trend down and that a long trade was in order. I did just that, but I just hate sitting through consolidation. I decided that I didn't like where I was and sold on a high point of this consolidation phase. My stop was at 56.07 - price never dipped low enough to hit it after my exit. This is frustrating and shows the lack of trust in my ability to read stock movement. I chickened out on what turned out to be a pretty good read of the reversal of the late afternoon move in RIMM, albeit a bit early. All I can do is try to gather more experience and overcome my hesitancy.

Too bad about today... I had up to 34 cents available to me and I only took about 7 cents.

Saw it, Liked it, Reprinting it...

I saw this post by Austin at http://www.coiledmarkets.com/ and really liked it.
NOW I have to go to work!


Tuned In, Tuned Out
Posted on November 16, 2010 by austinp

Money is made from the markets in one way: listening to your charts. They will tell you everything you need to know. Sometimes the charts give fair warning and plenty of time for preparation. Other times your charts will make a sudden announcement with no fair warning at all. Sometimes you have all the time in the world to plan your next trade sequence, while other times there is no time for preparation at all.

But your charts will always tell you what is happening in real time.

Where traders get themselves in trouble is trying to go outside the charts for advanced warning, i.e. prediction and forecast of what’s to come. Now it is perfectly fine to map out scenarios on a long-term chart to mark waypoints such as key S/R, open gaps, historical highs and lows, etc. What gets a majority of traders in trouble is the temptation to make forecasts and predictions about what should happen according to this, that and the other reasons.

A fixation on market news will not give you an edge. Hanging on every word from the ilk on CNBC, Bloomberg, various websites or public message boards won’t provide any edge at all… it will actually blunt any edge you have in the first place. Trying to rely on logic and reason as to what should happen is exactly what the vast majority (read as “all”) of traders have done or continue to do each day. We know that the vast majority of traders lose money. The vast majority resort to logic & reason as a fallback attempt to figure out the markets. Do you see any correlation there?

Do yourself a favor. Turn off the financial news. Tune out the predictive newsletters and message boards. Tune into your charts. Believe what they say as they say it. Force out the thoughts of “too high” and “too low” that cost you too much money to harbor. Stand fast against destructive emotions that tempt you to pick tops and bottoms.

Hold yourself accountable to going with the market flow and flowing with the current of price action. Remain open minded, objective, patient and disciplined. Reward yourself with eventual monetary gain, something the vast majority of masses will never realize as they seek the wrong things down the wrong paths in this performance profession.

Trade To Win
AP

Monday & today

Nothing yesterday... just too much to do other than the market. Today looks like a very nice day to be practice-trading but it is unlikely I'll get a chance.
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Good trading to all!