June 19th

Day job took me away from the market at 2:30pm and kept me away until evening. By that time, I wasn't interested in logging in to update the blog. I wanted to do it now but found that IB is not allowing access to the platform today (Saturday). So, I'll update Friday's stats on Sunday. It was a small gain, in line with the others from this week; my first days trading the live account since October 2008.

Sunday Update:

I finally had a chance to post the results and a relevant chart from Friday. First trade was in ARM, a low price gutter-type stock I took off the IB pre-leaders list. Like Wednesday and yesterday, I had fun dipping my toes back in this vernal pool of the stock market as opposed to the ocean that is bigger cap, mainstream stocks & ETF's. Most of my activity on the day was in ERX, however, with one trade in SKF. I had small gains in all three issues.

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Patterns:

There's no mystery in my pattern of trading behavior since this blog started Feb 1st. I've put together a fairly consistent high percentage of winners to losers using strong divergence from the mean and high-volume spikes as entry triggers in anticipation of reversals of direction. In addition to some fantastic entry points on reversals, there has also been a pattern of occasionally getting in too early; a move continues instead of changing direction. This is where my dangerous habit of averaging a better price by adding to the losing position comes to the fore. For anyone interested in adopting this method of entry, I strongly suggest you get in the habit of setting a firm stop instead of averaging for a better price. Either engage a stop and immediately go the other way in the direction of the prevailing trend (employing another stop, because you know the reversal is near) OR, stay out until you get a better signal of that impending turn in the stock. This is most certainly a "Do as I say, not as I do" advisory, as this is my worst pattern of behavior and has resulted in much or all of my gains in a given month being erased from a single bad trade. Relatedly, as you add to your losing position on the wrong side of a big move, any eventual gains are often small when and if the anticipated reversal arrives. Lastly, when you finally exit the "averaged trade," you face the sick realization that you either got only a small gain for your efforts or took a monster loss all the while witnessing what would have been a big winner had you only been on the other side of the trade!

Another pattern of my trading behavior is the less worrisome problem of not letting my winners run long enough. This is largely a function of a lack of skill identifying exit points. This pattern of behavior is one I can learn to work with and manage. The former pattern of not cutting losers short with stops is not. It will lead to my ruin, eventually. It will obliterate my capital and it will destroy my psyche.

The fact that on a couple occasions this week I tried to average in for a better price with real money is the reason that I will now go back to primarily trading my practice account. I need to work on my fundamentals. I cannot afford to fail at this... it is my future. The stakes are high; much of my life hinges on my success at trading.

Weekly results of live trading: 23 for 30, a 77% success rate. Gain of $257.

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7 for 10 winners, a 70% success rate. Gain of $32.82 in 5 hours of live trading.

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.