The Return Of An Old Friend

Gross: +$681.00
Net: +$657.69
Trades: 59
Shares Traded: 58000

Stocks Traded Today (net profit/loss):
EMC Corporation (EMC): +$417.64
Banco Bradesco S.A. (BBD): +$207.58
The First Marblehead Corporation (FMD): +$79.76
AK Steel Holding Corporation (AKS): +$38.79
BCE Inc. (BCE): +$33.48
Callaway Golf Company (ELY): +$20.41
Johnson & Johnson (JNJ): +$5.75
Countrywide Financial Corporation (CFC): -$16.76
The Coca-Cola Company (KO): -$128.96

Today if felt good to trade my good old friend EMC Corp (EMC).....it's definitely been a while since I traded this stock.

Last year I used to trade EMC practically every day and it used to be my biggest monthly winner.

And today I got a chance to trade a little bit of EMC as it reported before the open today. I kept my positions rather light (maximum was 4000 shares) compared to the position sizes I used to trade on it (10,000 or 20,000 share positions).

But it was good to get back in a rhythm with EMC and was almost like riding a bicycle....once you've learned how to do it, you can easily pick it back up later on in the future....and EMC was like that for me today....fairly easy to read (if I had only gone in with 10,000 or 20,000 shares!).

Lately I've stopped trading EMC simply because my game plan had changed...I now look for stocks that move or that either have some upside or downside momentum on the daily charts.

With EMC however, you'd sometime be lucky if you had a 25-cent range on it (which is the reason I stopped trading it). Who knows....maybe I'll come back to it every now and again just to take some profits from it, but we'll see.

Coca-Cola (KO) also reported this morning, but I just couldn't trade the darn stock properly!

I'd get into a position on it, then it'd run in my favor, but then it'd keep falling back down hard and it kept swiping me out for a loser. But yet I don't know why I kept trying to trade it....it just kept kicking my butt today.

Aside from that, I found that a lot of the stocks I was watching were just jittering around and not really going anywhere fast. I just had to be mindful not to do anything stupid

Two good trades and no bad ones today.

The last little while my P&L has been swinging quite a bit....which is a good thing. Lately I've been posting either a small loss or a small gain, so at least this gives me an indication that I'm getting a little more aggressive in terms of position and share size.

Let's see what tomorrow brings!

Good Trades
(trades in which I make $200 or more)

• 9:38:36AM - EMC Corp (EMC) started to move aggressively up and so I went long 2000 shares at $15.25 and I added another 2000 shares at $15.30 after seeing EMC continue it's run to the upside. I got out as follows: 6-cent winner (2000 shares), 9-cent winner (2000 shares) ($300 profit before fees ; Long 2000 @ $15.25, Long 2000 @ $15.30 ; Out: 9:41:26AM)

• 10:17:07AM - Banco Bradesco (BBD) had come back up near it's intraday high and when it looked like it was going to break, I went long 1000 shares at $21.15. BBD started moving up and when the $21.20 level broke, I went long another 500 shares (so that I would have 1500 total shares long). I got out as follows: 11-cent winner (500 shares), 13-cent winner (500 shares), 16-cent winner (500 shares) ($200 profit before fees ; Long 1000 shares @ $21.15, Long 500 shares @ $21.20 ; Out: 10:26:44AM)
  

Bad Trades
(trades in which I lose $150 or more)

• None