June 18th

My first day since last fall that I traded exclusively my live-account. I didn't even log into the paper-trade account. Overall, it went well. Nine trades, seven winners traded mostly off extremes in volume and diversion from the mean as the trade trigger. My two losses were scratch trades, the first one as a malfunction in the trading platform. I clicked to place the trade and a precautionary window came up, something which hadn't happened on any of the earlier trades. I took the trade anyway but thought better of it when I saw that IB had made the short for only 9 trades instead of the preset lot of 250. Loss of 36 cents plus the 2 dollar commission! Ha. I have no idea what happened because I made no adjustments to the platform!....?????? I spent some time trying to figure it out but really couldn't. The next trade went through fine. Set up a live-chat with IB but got no response once the chat window came up. Left them a poor grade on the customer service screen assoc with the chat then moved on. Second loss was a scratch, loss of 92 cents, while lightening my position in the final trade. I had ignored my stop-loss and been down a couple hundred dollars so when my position went green, i cut it by 33%. Should have stuck with it on the other 2/3 of the position but I sold it moments later for a gain. The gain would have been very nice had I held. Once again, that was the story of the day for me. I really need practice letting winners run. I left much $ on the table.

First winner of the day and biggest gainer was a small-dollar stock which I picked up off the IB pre-leaders board, a list I once watched closely when I participated in the old GOTS chat. It was fun to have a look at them again. There's no doubt that opportunity is hidden in the "gutter."

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7 for 9 winners, a 78% success rate. Gain of $127.77 in 6.5 hours of live-trading

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).