Treading Cautiously & Anonymous Comments

Gross: +$52.00
Net: -$86.31
Loss From Top: $329.62
Trades: 77
Shares Traded: 130800

Stocks Traded Today (net profit/loss):
Merck & Co. Inc. (MRK): +$213.68
DIRECTV Group (DTV): +$101.23
Wells Fargo & Company (WFC): +$76.52
The Home Depot Inc. (HD): -$15.51
EMC Corporation (EMC): -$56.16
Sprint Nextel Corporation (S): -$68.37
Time Warner Inc. (TWX): -$119.24
Alcatel Lucent (ALU): -$218.45

Today I just traded cautiously and didn't really want to take too much risk.

We seemed to have a continuation of the system problems we were having yesterday, so I didn't want to do anything drastic and just tried to trade conservatively.

After a while I just got used to the messed up Level 2's and the weird prints going off on the time and sales. It looks like those weird prints that are going off 10 cents out of the money appear to be real because they also show up on the eSignal charts.

Browsing around on the EliteTrader message boards, I found that I could filter out those weird prints on eSignal so that my charts didn't look too horrid.

For most of the morning I was reluctant to do anything, but when the afternoon rolled around, I started trading a little too much. All in all, I would hover around the unchanged mark for the whole day and I ended the day slightly negative.

I feel as though I've been battered and bruised closing out February. I guess I'll just have to adjust to whatever appears to be going on at the NYSE with the weird prints and I'll just have to get used to all the constant stickies. But when all of these problems started this week, I feel as though it kind of messed me up and that I've had difficulty getting in the zone.

Aside from that, not much else to say. No good trades or bad ones. It just felt like I was just churning and racking up the fees.

On to other things....

The web traffic on this blog is slowly increasing and I knew it would be inevitable that I'd start getting those dreaded negative Anonymous comments. We've all seen them on other blogs and now they have arrived on this blog.

And it seems as though these kinds of comments come to those who post their numbers daily. I know Boogster and Glenn have had their share simply because they are not afraid to post their numbers, good or bad. I commend those two guys because I know they are strong enough to not let those negative Anonymous comments bother them.

Unfortunately, whenever they (or I) hit a trading rough patch, those negative Anonymous comments come in a flurry and they just seem to pound you into the ground even further.

And it also seems that those negative Anonymous comments appear to be attracted to posts in which I either express anger or frustration in my posts. So from here on in, I'm going to try to structure my posts with less emotion....hopefully it will be more constructive for myself and it will deter those negative Anonymous comments.

For now, I'm simply going to ignore those negative comments and I'll only respond to those who appear to be giving constructive criticism or those that are genuine. Who knows, I may have to do what some other bloggers do and simply do not allow Anonymous comments.

So if I'm late in responding to your genuine comment, it's not because I'm ignoring you, but it's more because I'm now more reluctant to check to see what comments have been left on the blog because sometimes I just feel too tired to have to respond to negative comments or I feel too tired to have to try to defend myself.

But I do know this: every time I do get one of those negative comments, it sometimes lets a little air out of the tire (especially after a rough day) and when I sometimes get a lot of them, I just feel as though this blog is probably more work than it's worth. It can sometimes get in my head and play games with me, especially during the trading day, but I'll try my best not to let it bother me.

Anyways, February has now ended and I'm limping to the finish line. If I cannot get back in the zone tomorrow, I may have to take Friday off.

Good Trades
None.

Bad Trades
None.