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

Thursday, June 29, 2006

A Complete And Utter Embarrassment

Gross: -$542.89
Net: -$686.24
Loss From Top: $713.77
Trades: 71
Shares Traded: 151994

Stocks Traded Today (net profit/loss):
Exxon Mobile (XOM): +$47.65
Citigroup (C): +$44.24
Home Depot (HD): +$37.53
General Electric (GE): +$15.25
Walmart (WMT): +$7.39
Micron Tech (MU): -$1.74
Corning (GLW): -$11.74
JP Morgan (JPM): -$139.12
Pfizer (PFE): -$685.12

What's this? The Dow is up over 200 points, the S&P is up over 2% and I somehow manage to lose a ton of money?!?!?

What's going on? Well - I'm a retard, that's what...

Right from the morning, I goofed and screwed up, lost a lot of money and I was never able to recover. Even during the huge rally after the Fed's announced the rate hike, I still managed to lose money!

So what happened? Well, here are just some reasons:
  1. I traded Pfizer (PFE)
  2. I started the day too aggressively - I put on big positions when I should have known the markets would be quiet before the Fed announcement
  3. I traded Pfizer (PFE)
  4. After I lost a lot of money on the first trade of the day, I found that my confidence wavered a little and as a result, I hesitated on several occasions and missed out on some great trades
  5. I traded Pfizer (PFE)
  6. I never learned my lesson and I continued to trade Pfizer (PFE) even though it didn't move very well the whole day
  7. I traded Pfizer (PFE)
I am going to make a new promise to the world and I hope that all of you reading this will try to keep me from breaking this promise. I hereby declare that I will never EVER again trade Pfizer (PFE) for the rest of my trading career. I am forever banishing it from my tradelists and I will not be allowed to even look at Pfizer's Level 2.

This retarded stock has cost me an arm and a leg throughout my trading career. Yes, I will have some good days on it from time to time, but that's just the tease to keep you hooked on Pfizer. In the long run, I'll just lose money on it. Early on in my trading career I already discovered this fact, but Pfizer is always a tempting stock and somehow I keep coming back to it.

The first trade of the day was on Pfizer (PFE) and I lost close to $400 on it. I was shaken after the first trade of the day, and I was able to slowly climb back out of the hole, but then I traded Pfizer again and lost money on it again.

Everytime I felt like I was getting back into the rhythm of the markets and when it looked like I would be able to get out of negative territory, Pfizer would pound me back even harder into negative territory.

And everytime the markets rallied today, all I kept doing was watching and "attempting" to trade Pfizer when I could have made money in the other stocks. But because Pfizer's Level 2 always looks so appealing, I kept falling for it and traded it.

Since I was so obsessed with Pfizer today, I wasn't able to make even one good trade (as most of my attention and focus was on this stupid stock). Meanwhile, there were 4 bad trades today.

In all honesty, this day was completely embarrassing for me. I'm really going to have to put it together tonight because I am totally upset at today's performance.

Not only that, it may very well have cost me the chance to break $10,000 by the end of the month (which was one of my goals for this month). Coming into today, I just needed less than $600 to do this, but now I need to make close to $1300 tomorrow if I'm going to meet this goal.

So, this is where I'll part ways with Pfizer. It's been a real love/hate relationship between us, but this will be my final goodbye to you Pfizer!

Good Trades
None

Bad Trades
9:54AM - Pfizer (PFE) was flat while the Futures were moving up. The Futures continued moving up so I went long 10,000 shares. Well the Futures continued moving up, but Pfizer (PFE) didn't move. After a bit, Pfizer started falling, so I was forced from my position. I got out as follows: 2-cent loser (700 shares), 4-cent loser (9300 shares) ($386 loser before fees)
  • Damn you Pfizer! I should have known not to trade it based on it's chart. The Futures were moving up all morning but Pfizer stayed flat all morning.
  • I must take all the blame on this trade - I just have to be smarter, recognize what I see on the charts and know what to trade, and what NOT to trade
10:50AM - JP Morgan (JPM) was flat while the Futures were moving up. I went long 4000 shares when I thought JPM broke a level, but it became obvious that some big player out there was keeping JPM from moving up. I had to get out of my position as follows when huge sell orders started showing up. Got out as follows: 1-cent loser (200 shares), 3-cent loser (300 shares), 4-cent loser (3200 shares) ($139 loser before fees)
  • Like the previous bad trade, I should have recognized what I saw on the charts and should have automatically avoided trading this stock
  • All morning I was watching this stock and should have realized that all morning, someone was preventing JPM from moving above the $41.80 level
2:51PM - Pfizer (PFE) wasn't really moving anywhere while the Futures were up, but were retracing back a little. Pfizer looked like it didn't want to go any higher (even though the Futures were ripping up), and there was big size on the offer. So I got short 10,000 shares when the Futures started moving back down. Well the level supporting my trade broke, so I got out for a 1-cent loser ($100 loser before fees)
  • At this point, I was losing my mind and I was extremely frustrated with this stock. Pfizer kept refusing to go higher so I decided to short (despite going against my trading rules)
  • I also put on a position that was too big (since this was going against my trading rules)
3:31PM - Pfizer (PFE) was uptrending slightly while the Futures were still rocketing higher. I went long 10,000 shares but this stupid stock refused to go up and I was forced to get out as follows: 1-cent loser (5000 shares), 2-cent loser (5000 shares) ($150 loser before fees)
  • Yup - that's Pfizer for you
  • This was the last straw for me...after this trade I was so upset and frustrated I simply left for the day
  • I hope I've learned my lesson from trading this stock and I hope by going through all of this, it will save me 1,000s of dollars further on in my trading career.

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