July 26th

I was able to take the morning to look at MON and try some practice trading. It was marked by right idea, shoddy execution. The big runup in the stock since afternoon last Thursday indicated to me that some profit-taking was coming. I thought that it would happen a bit earlier today and shorted the first breakdown of the day. That was a bad idea as I basically went short at the reversal point, picking the worst price of the move to do it. Bad execution. The morning price peaked at the 10:15 (?)doji and began to drop... not a lot of volume today so one of my indicators was not as helpful as it normally can be. As price popped at 10:30-10:45, I continued to hold short and then another drop toward the LOD. I saw the doji at 11:05 but then saw also the near doji that followed so I thought the breakdown was at hand. I shorted another 1000 shares about two cents from the original entry. And... another fakeout! Up it went on a great green candle. I held in anticipation that my gut feeling was right; a profit taking was coming in Mosaic. It then began to happen, albeit slowly. I dumped half at roughly breakeven then held the remainder, dumping it for a gain a couple minutes later.

As I mentioned before, good idea, poor execution.

Now done for the day. I am excited to see how things end for the day when I log in this evening...

Friday July 23rd

No trades. Combination of day-job appts. and family visiting from Virginia.

July 22nd

I was able to sit in for the last 45 minutes of today's session and picked up three winners as I sorted through my snail mail and email.

The TNA chart was screaming at me that a big downdraft was coming... a very strong feeling. So, I took the paper-trade short at the 3:25 pm candle and held it as it briefly inched up... at one point the trade was in the red about $70, then down it went. it hung up at the EMA 7 so I watched it a bit... then, it drooped some more and I bailed out on it. Shortly thereafter, it sank like a stone and as I came back to the computer I realized I had chickened out on the best short opportunity in TNA all day, even after recognizing the signs, having the gut feeling and getting a short-entry within six cents of the top of the move (also the HOD).

So, to ease my pain, I scalped a quick winner near the bottom of the move. Later, near the close, I took a flying leap and shorted what I thought would be the top of final move of the day (because of the settled price of the 3:20pm doji). It wasn't a bad call, catching the short scalp within 6 cents of the final top of the day.