Stepping It Up....But Only By A Little

Net: +$805.75
Trades: 33
Shares Traded: 17200

Stocks Traded Today (net profit/loss):
Ameren Corporation (AEE): +$390.87
PartnerRe Ltd. (PRE): +$349.25
Suntech Power Holdings Co., Ltd. (STP): +$94.44
Honeywell International Inc. (HON): +$25.34
Continental Airlines, Inc. (CAL): +$24.43
Alcan Inc. (AL): +$20.42
International Business Machines Corp. (IBM): +$13.61
Equifax Inc. (EFX): -$36.06
AK Steel Holding Corporation (AKS): -$76.58

Today was the second full day of using my subscription to Trade-Ideas and like yesterday, it alerted me to several trading opportunities.

I tried to get a little more aggressive with my positions size-wise, but for whatever reason, I still felt a little reluctant to go all out and put on a position that really mattered.

But instead of using a lot of 200 or 300 share positions, I stepped it up....if only by a little today as most of my positions were 500 shares.

However, this morning I found it another day with very little in the way of opportunities...just nothing seemed to come up on my radar.

After about an hour and a half of trading, I had traded very little and I was just about break-even P&L-wise.

There were a couple of alerts via Trade-Ideas, but I found myself just watching them in the morning as I didn't feel comfortable putting a position on them simply because the S&P Futures kept tanking in the morning and the alerts I had on were for longs.

I also find it interesting that I'm actually trading less than I normally would. I had thought that I'd be trading a lot more simply because Trade-Ideas would constantly feed me alerts and I thought I'd be trading a lot of them.

Instead, I'm finding that I'm becoming pickier with my trades (which is a good thing!).

Why?

Well before Trade-Ideas, I'd usually have a watchlist of about 8 stocks and if they were doing nothing, I'd have to go through the arduous task of looking for stocks that were moving....this involved looking through the most actives list, the most up list, the most down list.

Doing all of that was rather time consuming and I found that if I found even a semi-mediocre setup, I'd trade it because of the lack of opportunities and because my thinking was that that was the best opportunity at the moment.

But now since I have Trade-Ideas feeding alerts to me, I find that the need to trade a setup is not as urgent since I know there will be many more alerts to come.

I also find that Trade-Ideas is keeping me away from those "I'm bored" type of trades. Since it's constantly giving me trade ideas, I can flip to the chart and look (and possibly wait) to see if there are opportunities available to trade it.

If not, then I know they'll be another alert that would soon follow.

I find that if the markets are sideways or quiet, I'm prone to putting on a trade just to kill some time or because I feel like I need to do something before time runs out. But Trade-Ideas keep me from doing this because I'm constantly watching the price action and the charts for their alerts.

Anyways, two good trades and no bad ones today.

One final note - lately I've been receiving a lot (I mean a lot) of spam (I get at least 50 emails telling me about some cheap penny stock along with a whole lot of other spam) and as a result, I'm kind of slow in responding to emails.

As a result of this, I've turned off email notification for whenever a comment is left on this blog. If I don't respond to your comment, it's not because I'm ignoring you....it's because I'm trying to reduce the amount of emails I'm getting.

That being said, if you really want me to respond, please drop me an email (see my complete profile on the sidebar)....I might be slow in responding to you, but at least I'll get around to it.

Oh and one last thing...I've modified the daily post (yet again) and now I'll only be posting my net profit and I'll no longer post my gross profit (after all, the net profit is the most important right?).

Let's see if I can continue to step it up (even if it's just a little bit) for the remainder of the week.

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

• 10:54:56AM - I was alerted to a move being made by Ameren (AEE) and so I watched for it to break the $53.00 level and when it did break, I tried to go long 1000 shares, but got partially filled for 900 shares. Once AEE broke the $53 level, it just started to run to the upside...I tried to hold as long as I could, but I ended up chasing it back down. I got out as follows: 25-cent winner (200 shares), 40-cent winner (200 shares), 49-cent winner (200 shares), 55-cent winner (300 shares) ($393 profit before fees ; Long 900 shares @ $53.00 ; Out: 10:58:52AM)
  
  
  

• 11:14:24AM - I was alerted that PartnerRe (PRE) was making new 52-week highs so I flipped to it and waited for the break of the $73.00 level. When it broke, I went long 500 shares. Once the $73.00 level broke I had to wait for a bit before PRE made a move, but when it did, PRE just exploded to the upside and I got out as follows: 60-cent winner (200 shares), 75-cent winner (200 shares), 80-cent winner (100 shares) ($350 profit before fees ; Long 500 shares @ $73.00 ; Out: 11:21:40AM)
  

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

• None