April 27th

I had a few minutes near the end of the day to have a look in on the markets. I was trading in my live account today for the first time since last fall. I found TV had dropped significantly throughout the day and watched it for a rebound at end of day. It hit a spot where I felt a pullback might occur and traded a mere 250 shares manually(limit order without using the quick entry, preset button). I was about 5-6 minutes early on the reversal; I sold the minor gain in the last minute when it felt like it had run out of gas. Unfortunately, because of my infrequent use of this live account, I had forgotten that the short-cut "button" was preset to 500 shares. So, what ended up happening when I closed the 250 share long position was an additional trade going short for the same # of shares. I bailed on that when I realized my error, losing most of the tiny, single-digit gain I had. Oh, well. NBD. This was never meant to be a money-maker to begin with.

This was more or less a practice-trade to test my reversal instincts with real money on the line, even if it was only a $5,000 position. I'm satisfied with the result. I didn't add to the position when it was losing money, and I waited for my idea to develop. My entry was based on study of chart and momentum, as was my exit. As mentioned earlier, the entry was a bit quick but the exit was dead-on.