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

Monday, July 17, 2006

As Flat As Flat Can Be

Gross: +$743.80
Net: +$669.03
Loss From Top: 0
Trades: 61
Shares Traded: 80876

Stocks Traded Today (net profit/loss):
Walmart (WMT): +$296.51
AT&T (T): +$271.49
Home Depot (HD): +$29.14
Bank of America (BAC): +$27.31
Hewlett Packard (HPQ): +$26.37
JP Morgan (JPM): +$18.24
Corning (GLW): +$13.00
Citigroup (C): -$13.05

I cannot believe how unbelievably flat the markets were this afternoon! The morning market action was great - several swings to the up and downside, but once 11AM rolled around, nothing...ABSOLUTELY NOTHING was happening in the markets until about 3:30PM.

It was kind of a good thing the execution server went down during part of the market flatness. I would have probably lost money during this time and I'm just thankful that downtime prevented me from doing so.

I was looking forward to the possibility of another $1000+ day today as I was up about $600 by 11AM. Unfortunately the overall markets did not cooperate and I spent the whole afternoon waiting...

Oh well...no complaints here...it just that it's almost certain that I will not be able to reach my goal of ten $1000+ days. Perhaps I should switch it around a bit and instead try to obtain a $2000+ day...Hrmmmmm.....we'll see what happens.

Today my main focus was on patience in riding winners. I tried to really resist the temptation to jump out of a trade that was working for me. Tomorrow I'll continue to practice this and hopefully it will soon become second nature to me.

There were two good trades today versus no bad trades.

Good Trades
10:32AM - Walmart (WMT) was downtrending as were the Futures. A level broke on the bid so I went short 5000 shares. I rode this position for as long as I could and there was a brief moment in time in which I thought this position was going to go against me, which is why I got some of my shares out for evens. I got out as follows: evens (500 shares), 1-cent winner (1900 shares), 2-cent winner (600 shares), 8-cent winner (900 shares), 10-cent winner (1000 shares), 14-cent winner (100 shares) ($217 profit before fees)

10:58AM - AT&T (T) was starting an uptrend while the Futures were curving up into an uptrend. A level broke on the offer, so I tried to get long 10,000 shares, but only got partially filled for 5600 shares long. I rode this position out as long as I could and got the entire position out for a 4-cent winner ($224 profit before fees)

Bad Trades
None

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