Miners day

My best trades were two mining stocks, NG and NGD, maybe it is time for the GDX to bounce back. KERX was a failed gap play. UPS had been testing 70 for a long time, was bound to get through finally, quick scalp.

Teachers, mentors, coaches

I am a slow learner, and I was slow to learn that teachers, mentors, and coaches are absolutely invaluable. When I was young I thought you had to do it all on your own. Unfortunately you do not get all the tools you need that way. You might get good at hammering, but you miss the parts about sawing and cutting, simply because you do not know the whole scheme of things. It increases the learning curve when you are learning on your own.

Look, top athletes like Jordan and Woods have coaches, Presidents have speech writers and advisors. These are not mentors, they are paid coaches. If you are not lucky enough to have a teacher or mentor, then find someone good to train you. I have tried a few trading coaches that I have paid, never more than 100 a month, and, again, only a few. I only chose folks that had proven themselves to me in real time by posting trades. One was a poor, and the other 2 were great and in very different ways. I am happy to share my experience if you are interested and looking.

The nice thing about this profession is that the bottom line is a cut and dry metric. If you are not making money, you are doing something wrong, and thus you need help, or are getting the wrong help.

later plays monday

Getting more patient. I took one bad trade in the morning, but stayed patient and got a couple good ones in the afternoon, and a couple other flats+, and made my daily goal. It is interesting that having written up a trading plan with a daily goal has very much changed my trading during the day. Today, when I hit my goal, my trades became much more defensive. My stops became 'break evens' a little quicker than they would have before. Also, before I met my goal, I was quicker to sell to realize my gains and make my goal, rather than trying to hit a home run. So my day, instead of being: triple, strike out, strike out, strike out, single, strike out (scratch the triple if it was not a good day); was more like: single, strike out, double, strike out, single, single, strike out, single.

Got a good one

NUAN turned out very well. Identified it in premarket as a gapper on earnings news. It gave a nice easy setup that I used a buy stop for, took a medium/full size position and it just kept running above my sell stops that I was frantically updating. If I had been selling at market I would have unloaded more of the stock at lower prices, thinking that the moves were unsustainable, and usually that is the right thing to do, but this time it really helped me unload in the top half of the move rather than spaced evenly along the way as usually happens. Course I totally missed the top, but I never expect to get those. If only we could catch these everday!

the bummer about CMC is that I identified its strength much earlier on, around 14.90 but did not act on it as I thought 15 too close and it would retest below that flag before going through 15; wrong! Instead I waited for another setup which was the flag entry, and it turned out fine. No NUAN triple, but nothing wrong with a bunt single. 1/3 size position

blah day

trades for thurday 11-18-2010, with notes

down day for the market

Only 2 day trades and closed a swing (poorly, i think).

Overtrade

Made too many trades today? Hard call though as the market did uptrend in weak and choppy fashion for most of the day. Here are 1/3 of my trades, but not the most exciting stuff today.

Only 3 trades today

Well, over-trading was not an issue today. The ENER trade was a dud, out flat, so that can be ignored, but the MCP trade was right on, taking a bit of timing, and  the TQNT swing trade is an example of an easy entry that can be set with a buy stop. You will have to refer to a daily chart to see the setup, which was a buy on the breakout of the highs, as I only showed the intraday minute chart here. I think my reasoning in the notes on MCP about placing limit, rather than market, orders is maybe some rationalization, I am not sure what the right solution is. ENER is a crap stock, so I was not going to give it any room, and the action the rest of the day showed it was the right decision... not saying that it will not gap up in the morning, but this kind of stock I don't trust.

Here we go

Will be doing a trading journal here for a stretch. Have no idea how long this will last, but I hope it helps me, and maybe you too.