A Level II Trade

Gross: -$372.00
Net: -$443.51
Loss From Top: $443.51
Trades: 37
Shares Traded: 66700

Stocks Traded Today (net profit/loss):
Time Warner (TWX): +$48.94
AT&T (T): +$24.90
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD): +$8.91
Home Depot (HD): -$22.82
Walmart (WMT): -$26.53
Ford (F): -$169.05
Motorola (MOT): -$307.56

What a nice miserable end to a garbage month!

Well? What can I tell you...another month in which I couldn't get anything going....no consistency, no big profits, and no real accomplishments this month (I don't even think I learned a thing!).

At the beginning of the month I was laughing at how pathetic October was...who's laughing now? I won't be surprised if I didn't make as much as last month.

I'll post up my end of month review either on Friday evening or on the weekend.

I won't bother telling you about the morning problems with the system...this is becoming routine now, so you can probably expect it to happen daily. In fact, as the days go by, the problems just seem to get worse and worse.

Oh well - I can't blame the system for my lousy trading...others were able to make money, so it's probably just me.

I missed a couple of nice moves on Ford (F) (level break at $8.20 at ~9:40AM) and AT&T (T) (break of $33.50 at about the same time) in the morning because the system was down....oh well - I guess I have to blame lady luck on that.

When the system stablized (around 10:30AM or 11AM), I felt I just had no rhythm in my trading. It could have been because of the garbage moves the overall markets were making.

I guess it serves me right trying to trade when nothing is going on...I'd like to thank my brain for thinking "Dang it! I missed many great moves this morning! I gotta do something!" - you did a great job of losing money brain! Way to go!

The one that really killed me was a trade on Motorola (MOT) (see bad trades below).

Motorola (MOT) was moving up and the Futures were doing diddly squat. I had intended to go long 2000 shares (since the overall markets weren't doing anything and MOT was moving in a choppy fashion).

But then I saw big size on the bid suddenly appear and for whatever reason, I decided that that was a cue to get in with a bigger position - so I went long 6000 shares.

Ha! There you have it! Level II trading at it's finest! I managed to lose $300 on that trade and from there I wasn't able to recover.

I continued losing more and then around 1PM, I decided I had enough of this garbage and I decided to go home (I didn't want to see how much money I could lose).

Am I upset about today's trading? No, not really (hence the sarcasm in my post) - in fact, I probably deserved what I got. I don't know why I keep falling for the same trap. I wish I could take a knife, cut out that part of my brain that thinks Level II trading is good and smash it to pieces!

Okay - I'm starting to sound a little frustrated....lemme just forget today ever happened and see if I can get December off to a good start tomorrow.

Good Trades
None.

Bad Trades
11:02:07AM - Motorola (MOT) was moving up while the Futures were sideways. There was some big size on the offer at the $22.06 and I was waiting to get long 2000 shares if it broke. Suddenly big size shows up at $22.05 on the bid and so I quickly upped my order size to 6000 shares and I got long. MOT went up one cent, then came back down...I got out as follows: 3-cent loser (300 shares), 4-cent loser (2700 shares), 6-cent loser (3000 shares) ($297 loss before fees ; Long 6000 shares @ $22.06 ; Out: 11:03:55AM)