There Was A Lot Of Money To Be Made Today...

Net: -$164.29
Trades: 61
Shares Traded: 34000

Stocks Traded Today (net profit/loss):
AnnTaylor Stores Corp. (ANN): +$84.58
Federated Department Str. (FD): +$73.90
Valero Energy Corporation (VLO): +$67.81
Liz Claiborne, Inc. (LIZ): +$49.42
The Shaw Group Inc. (SGR): +$43.15
Diana Shipping Inc. (DSX): +$32.82
LandAmerica Financial Group, Inc. (LFG): +$32.33
Barnes Group Inc. (B): +$15.47
Honeywell International Inc. (HON): +$14.88
The AES Corporation (AES): -$0.34
Ralcorp Holdings, Inc. (RAH): -$16.49
KB Home (KBH): -$30.51
Continental Airlines, Inc. (CAL): -$31.86
MAXIMUS, Inc. (MMS): -$61.87
Kohl's Corporation (KSS): -$102.20
ConocoPhillips (COP): -$111.89
Aeropostale, Inc. (ARO): -$224.01

There was a lot of money to be made today....if you were able to catch a couple of good shorts. Unfortunately I would have none of it....

Why?

Well there were a couple of mistakes today.

I basically spent most of the day going long. I dunno why, but I did. I'd get into a position and then the Futures would tank hard and I'd get out for a loser and I'd do it all again on some different stock.

Maybe it's because we've had so many up days in a row and I just got in the habit of just going long. I dunno.

And so, mistake #1 - constantly going long in a down market.

For some reason, I kept trying to trade Aeropostale (ARO) today....and I was constantly losing on it. It didn't really have any real good moves during the day, but yet I continued to try to trade it. As a result, the losses on this particular stock added up quickly.

It was one of those "I don't really know why I did it" kinda things. It had lousy moves intraday and yet somehow I saw something that made me want to trade it.

That's mistake #2 - trading a stock with lousy moves for no particular reason.

It wasn't until about half-way through the afternoon that I admitted that I was a fool by trying to constantly go long in this kind of market.

So I went and looked for shorts.

And I got into a couple of good ones that quickly turned into a rather good winner. As soon as I was in these positions, they quickly moved down and I felt as though my day was going to turn around.

I placed orders to get out on many of these positions, but when I saw the velocity of the descent, I quickly cancelled my orders, opting to try to capture more profits.

Then I'd see these positions reverse on me and I was reluctant to take partial profits as the stocks moved back up for fear of missing out on another good run to the downside.

As a result, I ended up watching these winners turn into losers, some of them fairly hefty ones. This happened to me on RAH, CAL, COP, and KSS.

Mistake #3 - letting good winners turn into losers.

And since I saw many good winners eventually turn into losers, I had a fear that this would occur again on some of my other shorts and as a result, I'd quickly take profits.

Of course, the market gods know what you're trading and to make an example out of you, they always make the stock continue going to the down side once you are out of a position - and they'll turn a good position into a losing one if you decide to hang onto your position.

And so, mistake #4 - getting out too early (this kind of contradicts mistake #3, but if I simply followed what my charts were telling me, I wouldn't have mistake #3 and #4).

That was the story today....I made a few bills in the morning, lost a lot more bills during the middle of the day, and I just didn't have enough time to claw my way out of the hole.

No good trades and no bad ones.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll be more aware...

Good Trades
(trades in which I make $250 or more)

• None
  

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

• None