Like A Dumb Monkey

Gross: +$481.00
Net: +$131.89
Loss From Top: $289.98
Trades: 102
Shares Traded: 347000

Stocks Traded Today (net profit/loss):
Electronic Data Systems Corp (EDS): +$311.81
EMC Corporation (EMC): +$280.26
Time Warner Inc (TWX): +$58.14
Circuit City Stores Inc (CC): +$55.29
PepsiCo Inc (PEP): -$3.98
The Gap Inc (GPS): -$27.83
Federated Department Stores (FD): -$65.01
The Walt Disney Company (DIS): -$80.69
Prudential Financial Inc (PRU): -$96.30
Motorola Inc (MOT): -$299.77

My oh my....

And I thought today was going to be a great trading day...

One of my favorite stocks to trade, EMC Corp (EMC), had news on it and was very active in today's trading session.

A stock I used to trade a lot of, Disney (DIS), reported as well and it too was quite active.

And a blast from the past, Electronic Data Systems (EDS), also reported as well...I used to trade this stock quite a bit in the past.

One of the first few stocks I traded when I started as a trainee, PepsiCo (PEP), also reported.

Perhaps it was because there were so many favorites from the past and present that were in play that I wasn't able to capture any good moves on any of those stocks.

For the first hour and a half of trading, I was constantly moving from stock to stock and I kept missing a move or a level break.

At one point I was watching Disney (DIS) and I wanted to wait for a level to break, but then I saw that EMC was breaking a level, so I flipped over to that stock, but I missed it, then when I went to DIS, the level I was waiting for broke....just as I was checking those level breaks, I realized I was missing a level break on another stock.

It was kind of like information overload and it had me scrambling all over the place this morning.

By 11:00AM, I had practically missed everything I had been waiting for and I didn't have any profits to show for the rather eventful morning.

Then I made the mistake of trying to trade EMC all afternoon. Take a look at the 5-minute EMC chart from noon onwards....I tried to trade that....


Of the 347,000 shares I traded today, about 200,000 were on EMC.

It felt as though all afternoon long I was just moving EMC shares around. And with the way EMC was moving in the afternoon, I found myself punching into a position and punching out of that position (in other words, the more expensive way of getting in and out). With the sizes of my EMC positions, the fees just racked up like crazy.

And I don't know why I just kept trading EMC and churning away at it when there were probably better opportunities out there.

It felt like I was a dumb monkey that gets an electric shock every time it reaches for a banana...no matter how many times it gets shocked, the dumb monkey doesn't learn it's lesson and continues to reach for the banana and continues to recieve that electric shock. Every time it reaches for the banana, it thinks that maybe this time it won't get shocked, but the monkey gets zapped, doesn't learn it's lesson, and does it again.

Just like that dumb monkey, I kept trading EMC, thinking that this time it would break out of that trading range and each time I did that, I would have to get out at break even and rack up the fees.

Then I tried to change things around and I tried to trade the range...if EMC moved to the upper part of the range, I'd go short, if it moved to the lower part of the trading range, I'd go long.

This was met with limited success as I lost money just as much as I made money doing this.

Maybe it was because I missed some nice moves on EMC this morning that I was expecting the same kind of moves on it the afternoon.

Hopefully I can grow some brain cells and learn something from this...I don't wanna be a dumb monkey...

There were no good trades nor were there any bad trades....there were just TOO MANY trades.

Today it felt as though I fought 1000 battles and by the end of the day I just felt completely exhausted. Lemme get to bed early tonight and I'll see if I can end the week on a good note...

Good Trades
None

Bad Trades
None.