An NYSE Scalper's Tale - A Trader's Diary

Sunday, March 19, 2006

I Hate Witching Days (Fri Mar 17 Results)

Gross: +$136.99
Net: +$45.06
Loss From Top: 51.62
Trades: 50
Shares Traded: 87794

Stocks Traded Today (net profit/loss):
Citigroup (C): +$95.80
LSI Logic Corp (LSI): +$67.82
Walmart (WMT): +$43.55
Pfizer (PFE): +$39.94
Sprint-Nextel (S): -$42.33
JP Morgan (JPM): -$60.54
Micron Tech (MU): -$99.18

Historically I have done poorly on witching days (when options on stocks expire - occurs every 3rd Friday of every month). It was bad enough that on Friday it was a quadruple witching day (options expire for stocks, futures, stock index, and single stock futures), I also had to put up with a market that had no real direction in mind.

All day, I couldn't get anything going; add in lots of choppiness, and you get what I got today. Right from the start of the day, most of the stocks I was watching were all over the place and on witching days, many stocks have a mind of their own. I was able to catch a few good swings during the day, but they were short-lived and I ended up giving back some of the gains I made because of the market chop.

No really good trades nor any real bad trades on Friday. Just had to get in and out fast and I often had profits from several small winners taken out by a losing trade. All in all, I would have to say it was a fairly boring day.

I have been contemplating whether I should just take witching days off, but I'll see how next month's witching day turns out before I make a decision...

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