I’m going to paper trade again into close after getting some real life work done, but thought I would make notes on what happened this morning. I have decided not to trade with my prop account until I can show some consistency with my sim trading – seems like the logical thing to do. I think this may take months. One good thing for me, whether I have TOS Paper Money or Genesis Laser fired up – my emotions are similar (there are some subtle differences) with 100 share positions – paper or cash.
My big issue remains over-trading. I am going to focus on slowing down. My rule is to wait ten minutes before entering a new trade – I use an actual egg timer to time this – but didn’t use it this morning. (When using my prop account, I also have a guideline of not entering a new trade if my current one is losing and to stop trading when I have three losers in a row. However, with paper trading – the more trades I get in, the more I learn – so I am going to focus on the 10 minute rule for now.)
Today’s trades were -.44 including commissions.
HOLX +.07 Long Pre-market mover up on FDA news. Did not capture (so far) it’s premarket high of $11.20 – volume wasn’t impressive and market was stalling. My rules on this is to wait for the full pull back usually around 9:45am and enter when the stock recrosses across the 10 SMA on the 1 minute chart and stay in until price crosses back over. This would of resulted in +.15. There was a .50 move to be made, but you would have to pick the bottom and top perfectly to get that. The reward here is the strong potential for the stock to get to $11.20, which happens often with biotech runners, but not always.
YAVY -.22 Short – This did not have a entry signal and I was stopped out. My analysis that the doubling of this price on this stock was unsustainable was right. But since I jumped in too soon. If I waited for my signal, currently this would have been a .30 move (stock just spiked again, which would have been an exit signal for me). While doubling up on this one would have worked out in some ways, I followed my rule of not doing so.
PRU -.23 Long & Short – My entries on these were ok but my exits did not work. I was up .45 on the long, but the whole market turned really quickly and I hadn’t moved my stop up so I took a -.07 loss. I did good staying in this trade, but should have exited sooner (I was busy shorting GE and should of seen the market turning around in part by the breakdown of GE). I then shorted the stock exited when the price got bouncy for a -.16 loss. If I had waited for my short entry and exit signal, this stock moved +1.50 – tanking nicely. Reminder to self: change the scaling on charts on stocks like this with such a wide range of movement – $5 in one day makes a .50 price scale similar to what a normal stock scale looks like for .10 – it gets all scrunched up.
GE +7 Short x 2 – Gave up gains on this by reshorting on a chase. My first entry and exit were decent based on signals to get in and out and resulted in +.22 gain. Should of stayed out the second time.
I’m picking stocks that are making nice intraday moves. Now I just need to get my trading behavior under control and my trading rules fine-tuned.
