June 17th

Not too bad today, traded mostly my live account. Got suckered into a stupid trade on a lusy low-volume clunker on which I made a successful paper-trade this morning. I hated to end the day on a loser but it is what it is. Had fun attempting to follow Scott Farnham on TNA throughout the day. He was a prolific poster today and so I got a chance to see his uncanny feel for changes of direction. To do what he does is my ultimate goal.

In my live account, I played SKF early on and later played TNA as I followed Scott. My only real loss was that EOD clunker in which I managed to lose 33% of my gains; small as they were. Still thankful for the gain on the day and losers are to be expected, especially since I am relatively new to this and only in my third day of live trading since the two weeks last October when I first began. That's three days and all three for winners. I still expect a losing day anytime so that is what keeps me sharp.

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8 for 10 winners, an 80% win rate. Gains of $70 in the real acct and $21 in the paper acct in 6.5 hours of trading.

I paper-traded most of the day but managed a quick real-money trade at EOD. I thought STEC might break down EOD given the big run up so I took a short at 3:38 pm but got caught in a choppy area so I just got out at the first sign of a positive number. Walked away with a big haul... $5.00 ! Paper-trading fared better with a gain of $932.50 from a position in each of the three following stocks: HES early because of the moves in oil, STEC, a big mover on the IB "Top % Gainers" list, and X just because I like to torture myself playing for reversals in strongly trending stocks. A bit of white knuckling on X but it worked out ok in the end.

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4 for 4 winners, a 100% success rate. Gains of $937.50 in 6 hours of paper trading($932.50) and real trading($5.00).

June 15th

I spent much of the morning trying to set up my real money trading account to match my simulated account. This was, in one word, trying. I typically don't mess with the IB setup and yet I managed to screw up both the paper-trade acct and the real money acct in ways I still don't understand. Over the week-end, I decided that I'd try to get some trading time on the live account but with reduced position sizes. This is only natural as I still think that I'll be fighting my"head" when the switch occurs to real-money trading. Small positions=small worries, I say. After finally getting my paper-trade acct back to normal, I practiced with it, found some more bugs, fixed them, then tried it out some. Before, I was using 1000 share trades. I am now using 250 share lots. I made two paper-trades for winners in SKF, netting $82.50 & $113.50 . then, I went to the live account and messed with the settings to match it to the simulated account. Then, I tried it for real... and it was still screwed! :-) It traded 100 share lots and not 250. It didn't make the "one-click" trade that I prefer... it asked for trade confirmations instead. So, I found and fixed the problem (I had made the correct changes earlier but apparently didn't click on "APPLY" to save them). Needless to say, my trade was more than a safe one as it netted out a whopping $21.02! Ha! Had it been correct, it would have netted out $52.50. Had I been trading my 1000 share lots from the past few months, it would have netted out $105. Basically, I took 12 cents out of it. The need for a new cellphone required a visit to the Verizon store and then a day-job project estimate took the remainder of my afternoon. Was it just me or were the stocks pretty lackluster after the early drop? Sort of like a bunch of wet dish rags, I think. I didn't check charts to see if the close offered any momo. I'm worn out and I'm leaving the computer now. I'll check on today's closing action tomorrow morning.
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3 for 3, a 100% win rate. Gain of $217 in 4.25 hours of paper ($196) and real ($21) trading.