Fool me once shame on you ....... - 4/19/2007

Fool me twice shame on me. Fool me a thousand times - while I am F. A really sick joke comes to mind but I will not share it because of the sad events at "VT". I may be sick but I am not that sick. This is painful. I thought or one of my goals of doing a blog is to become more discipline. Just writing adds more structure. Being a part of the "VO" is more revealing. It is one thing to lose money and no one knowing. Its another to lose money and have your wife know. But it is really something else to lose money and a bunch of the world knows and then finds out you did it because you didn't follow your own advice and you are doing the same mistakes over and over.

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Above are two examples of how I should not trade. Everyone of my trades today would fall into the category of this is how I know I should not trade. DSL is a recommendation by the big mouth on TV. It was up a lot in after hours and popped up in the premarket. I knew it was going to be a very thought trade but the though ones are usually the one that work. I shorted 200 shares near 8 am at 68.88. Got filled on 3/4's at 68.91 and the rest at 68.88 10 minutes later. Good so far. Now I should be looking to add to the position. The position should be 500 to 1000 shares. I did not. Started getting chicken but did not cover. The trade started going in my favor and bingo - I hit a bid at 68.50. Why - I do not know? There was no reason yet. Before I could even see my fill the stock was still falling. 40 cents on a lousy 200 shares. Lots of Happy Meals. I try holding on to shorts in the morning until 9:15 because that is when you should go long for the big mouth opening pop. A little risky with this stock but the open did not take out the morning high and lost power quickly - short the sucker again but did not. Stupid.

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The second is becoming my favorite stock - AKS. What have I wrote about in the past? What have I told myself a 1000 times before? How have I lost money over and over? Do not buy breakouts on the steels or slower moving stocks. They seldom work. AKS breakout to new daily highs 5 times and only the last one worked. 3 of the 4 other times the pullbacks were far enough to stop me out even though I traded this stock only once today. I had a buy stop at 26.51 - got slipped to 26.54 around 10:30 and stopped out minutes later.

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Three things I did wrong today. I did not fill out a position. I did not sit on my hands when a trade was going in my favor. I did not buy a pullback instead bought a breakout. Someone please hit me.

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The Numbers - gross -293, net -325, shares traded 5400