"A man is not finished when he is defeated. He is finished when he quits."

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

May 15 (Gain $95.75)

9:34 am   Still holding my 500 shares.
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9:56    The first six candles of TNA have long upper wicks.  A lot of selling at 48.90 area.  Now the 7th candle is rising without any notable selling.  Looks like the market was clearing out the sellers and the shorts and wants to push up... biggest candle of the day as of right now and it is green, unfortunately.
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10:00   With price up to yesterday's closing area, will there be selling?  Market looks very strong here...
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10:13  $48.83, the 50% retracement level between my price and the earlier high of $49.20 was just hit and price is bouncing up from it.  Remove any doubt that traders who do not stop out but rather average their losing trades (as I did) are easy marks for the markets.  Averaging losing trades is the reward for the winners in the market.  Price just used that 50% retracement as support again at 10:17 am and is running to the HOD.
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10:56   On the 15 minute SPY chart, four attempts to make the new high has brought sellers in, resulting in a long upper wick.  The current attempt is at the HOD so let's see if it can break through.  This level corresponds to a longer term, historical trend line.  Resistance did not hold... breaking out to new highs.  I am unbelievable frustrated with the way I have managed this trade, from the outset.  Absolutely dead wrong from the beginning, but mostly wrong for not stopping it out.  From there, wrong for  not acting on the four opportunities yesterday to get out this bad trade even, though I did use that time to take 2/3 of the position off for a small loss.
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11:44   Shorted 1500 shares TNA at 49.80.  Currently short 2000 total shares at 49.46
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2:12    Covered 1000 shares TNA at 49.47.  Loss $7.12.  Holding 1000 shares.
Exited 1250 shares from retirement account: sold all 1250 shares of TZA at $31.56 for a gain $237.98
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2:20    Covered remaining 1000 TNA at 49.36.  Gain $102.86.
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ok, this might keep falling, but I took an opportunity to exit this mess with very little pain overall.  Got out of a very badly executed trade for a total two-day loss of $44.20 lost $139.94 yesterday on the same trade.  If I had held the 2000 shares until this moment, I'd be up $700, btw.  But, that would require perfect trading and this trade was anything but.  I scrapped and cajoled my bad decisions into a loss of under $50.  I'll take that and try to learn a lesson from it.  And, I made about $240 in the IRA account, so net net, I'm up $193.78
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2:58    As I review the SPY historical chart, I notice that the rollover today in the market has brought today's price down to the trendline I discussed in last night's and today's earlier post: candle now has an upper wick.
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4:51    No more trades after the aforementioned.  That was a rough couple days for me, victimized by my own poor decisions.   As I mentioned earlier, I consider myself lucky to have escaped with less than a $50 loss over the two days.  The way I played this set me in position to take a sizable gain had i stuck with today's trade instead of scaling out.  Philosophically speaking, is it better to not be nicely rewarded for bad behavior?  I think so.
On a longer timeframe, I think this market is overbought by a large degree.  It continues to confound me by how it can run up like it has.  Pendulums do not swing in one direction.