Woke up late today, missing the first two hours of trading, and decided to not trade at all. This is pretty good considering I’m usually quite trigger happy on Mondays.
I have some stuff on my plate during next two weeks so trading may not be too heavy. We shall see. Maybe it’s best that I ride out the rest of this month sitting on my profits.
Most likely though I’ll be back at my desk tomorrow because I just can’t stay away…hehehe.
William Eckhardt On Trading
I first was exposed to William Eckhardt when I read The New Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager. This past Thursday, Charles Kirk posted a series of quotes on trading and investing attributed to Mr. Eckhardt. In these quotes, Eckhardt touches on many subjects that should hit close to home for many traders.
My favorite in the series is:
“In many ways, large profits are even more insidious than large losses in terms of emotional destabilization. I think it’s important not to be emotionally attached to large profits. I’ve certainly made some of my worst trades after long periods of winning. When you’re on a big winning streak, there’s a temptation to think that you’re doing something special, which will allow you to continue to propel yourself upward. You start to think that you can afford to make shoddy decisions. You can imagine what happens next. As a general rule, losses make you strong and profits make you weak.” - William Eckhardt
To read all nine quotes that Charles has featured, click here for the full post.
Blogs I Like To Read
A visitor to this blog recently asked me what finance blogs I enjoy reading and I thought I’d share that answer with everybody.
The type of blogs that I find interesting are the ones where the writer shares his daily profit and loss. I’m curious as to what others are doing and more importantly it shows me that everybody goes through their up and downs. With that in mind I read Dinosaur Trader who each day lists the P&L of a bunch of traders in his “Virtual Office.”
Glenn is a trader from British Columbia (my home province) and he writes a blog called DehTrader. I also enjoy reading Trader Bubs’ daily recaps. Others that I read who also share their P&L include Boogster and 10K Thrown Away.
However, Charles over at The Kirk Report runs my favorite market blog. He packs lots of great information into every post and his paid Members Area is well worth the $50 a year donation fee.
Back in the day, I used to read NYSE Trader on a daily basis but he stopped blogging which is a shame because his daily recap posts were quite good.
Adam Warner’s, Tim Knight’s, and Frugal Trader’s blogs also make my daily reading list.
Game Plan For The Week Ahead
After reviewing the past two weeks and trying to figure out why I haven’t felt comfortable on a few of those days, I came up with a game plan for the week ahead.
I am going to make a conscious effort to be patient and look for the best entries. I know I should be doing that every single day but sometimes I stray away, get lazy and impulsive. This has certainly been the case a few times lately.
If I keep this on my mind all week, I should reverse the course I’ve been on and get comfortable again. Enjoy the rest of your weekend and let’s hope that Monday is a high profit day for everyone.
I came into today with the goal of being patient and waiting for opportunities. I also wanted to take quick profits to circumvent the recent problems I’ve had with that aspect of trading. I’m happy to report that I accomplished both of these goals today.
However, there were some negatives like fighting the trend in AAPL and going long GOOG in a down market. I made most of my trades during the half hour span when the market bounced a little.
If you look at my trades you’ll notice that I traded 400 shares of AAPL and 500 shares of DXD as opposed to me normal 100-300 share lots. This was a conscious decision that I thought would help in a choppy market. Instead of looking for larger point gains, I would just take quick scalps. Now, this is all fine and dandy when the trade goes my way (which these did) but if it reverses and I don’t get out, it can do damage. I think I will stick to my 100/200 share trades next week though. I didn’t feel comfortable holding 400 shares of AAPL in this type of market.
Here is the recap:
Subtracting $42 in commissions from the total above left me with a profit of $353.75 on the day.
Now for the daily self-evaluation:
Pros:
Cons:
Overall, I felt much better about my trading than I had in the previous days. Let’s hope the feeling carries over to next week. I’ll be back later on today with another post.
