Today was ugly as I made lots of clerical errors, though it was technically profitable in terms of paper trades.
Orders: 25% – I exited two trades immediately by accident by putting in limit orders instead of stops, and I re-entered another position by not realizing that a stop had been filled. Very sloppy. I was trying to multi-task with some work assignments, but was not just not mentally fit to trade today.
Stops: 75% – On STEC, I had my first paper trade position in which the stock moved violently against me before I had a stop in place. I let the position breath like I did with my major loss days in August, and got lucky as I was correct on the trade. I just didn’t make much money on the trade as it involved one of my errors. For stocks on the move like this (moving 20 cents in seconds), I need to have a wider stop (than my simple paper trading rules currently enable).
Entries: I entered all the trades that met my criteria without hesitating.
Exits: I let my stops get hit without exiting too early or too late.
Some comments on the trades:
STEC – Short of Opening Range Low Breakdown (ORL-BD). This set-up is what I like to call an opening anchor. When you see the profound falling 10 minutes in (long red candles), more often than not you can break enter as it breaks a whole number price like $35 and have a some probability of profit (but not always). I waited for it to pull back a bit to above $33, but made a bunch of ordering errors and very little profit.
MT – Long of Opening Range Breakout (ORH-BO). Entered on pullback but was stopped out when it dropped quickly around 10:24am.
ZION – Long ORH-BO. Entered and exited by accident immediately. Currently leaving a quarter on the table as it would not of hit my stop yet.
FWLT – Long ORH-BO – Pattern failed and I was stopped out.
I hope to clean up the ordering mistakes tomorrow. Starting on Monday, I’m going to return to paper trading a modified version of my trading plan, rather than the simple trading rules that I’m practicing with right now.
