Today’s paper trades were ugly. But I came in unprepared spending more time blogging, commenting on other blogs, and playing virtual poker over the weekend than getting ready for the bell today. It is cool, Dinosaur Trader put me on his list of best posts of the year for stock market blogs. However, I spent more time on my poker discipline and pump-watch posts on Saturday and Sunday than I did looking at charts. So, I absolutely have to have my list of stocks – screened and studied ahead of time – to watch every single day, which didn’t happen today. I want to be a trader not a blogger, and want this site to help my trading, not take time away from it.

My one pick ahead of time – GTCB – did make a move today, but I wasn’t monitoring it close enough and got in late. I also got greedy and passed on $100 of profit when it peaked at .42. DDSS was a high of day play that is always risky to short. KFN was a long chase that sank a dime 2 minutes after buying, and SRZ went sideways for the day after longing it and I was stopped out. PSUN and JNY were decent retail trades, shorts in which I made the right call.

It was the last two trades that I regret the most. I logged back into chat in the PM after I ran out of trade leads and saw an alert of GMO from Muddy. I passed on entering at $.90 (even earlier but I hesitated). This eventually went up to $1.00 in my disbelief and I was very remorseful. So when I saw KFN and SRZ spike, I jumped in without any chart indicators or signals, just hope that they would do the same.

Overall, I am having way more success finding and executing short trades. Rarely has any of my long plays succeed lately. I need to look at this closer. I’m also having trouble with “game management”. I have to narrow my focus during the day on a smaller pool of stocks, at least until I learn to juggle so much information better. Last, I know I’m a little behind in sleep and missed a couple workouts – and that slowed me down today. The bright spot: I got six trades in for the day.