Thursday Trade Review 3/13/2008

Today was a weird day for me. I had all of my charts up and ready to go. The market opened and suddenly things did not make sense. I had 3 different numbers for the Dow that span 30 points. Some watch lists were updating. Some charts were updating. Nuts. I reboot IB. It was taking for ever. I tried rebooting TS. It came up a mess. I waited a while - nothing. I closed everything and rebooted my machine. My layouts came up a mess so I had to rebuild everything. That took an hour to do. Then I noticed I needed to do the March contract rollover. All of this took a little over an hour. Not Happy.

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I finally get to trade and I fire off my first trade too fast with out thinking it threw. That is the first chart of MOS. I nearly got stopped with in 60 seconds of placing the trade. I started to think - double up maybe with the same stop. I watch it until it gets stopped. If I bought it where I normally would and had the guts to hold it, man the stock went many points higher. I am an idiot.

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Trade number 2 is AKS. I should have called it a day with being pressed on my first trade and so frustrated with my computers. Did I stop ? A course not. AKS is the second chart. One of my favorite stocks to trade. So I was going to start a small position in the flag and add to it on the break. I should have calm down before trading again. I did not like my fill. I was debuting that if I should add some more. The waiting for the break out took longer than expected. It tried to break out but dropped 20 cents real quickly and the market did not look well. I got out. It did not drop any more. It finally broke out and it ran 40 cents fast. It started pulling back and what did I do? I got out. I am an idiot.

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On the third chart is the trade of NUE. Same type of detail on this one. It broke out. I bought it. It run 50 cents real quick then started falling and I bailed. I am an idiot.

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If I sat of these stocks and added at the right times, I could of made $2500. What did I make? $51. I was down over $100 on that first trade so I did turn black but the bottom line is - I am an idiot. I do not place my orders correctly on two of the trades. I did not follow my stops correct. I did not end up with the correct share size. How the hell do I ever make money doing these errors over and over on a day that it seem like Wall Street was handing out money.

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The only 3 pluses, I can come out with is I turned a losing day into a winning day. I continue to day with a little bigger share size and I did not do anything completely stupid today.

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The numbers:

Stocks: gross +68 net +51 shares 3200

Stock Futures: none

Other Futures: none

Forex: none