Well, I followed my rules on my first trade of XL and it was a loss. I broke the rules the rest of the day and made $540 on the afternoon rally. It’s nice to have my pretend account in the green, and it would of been nice to make a half grand trading! I left a lot of money on the table though.
XL – shorted crack of $4 but it bounced up and I exited when a full bar crossed the SMA. -80
PLD – shorted crack of $80, had a $200 profit but then the news/rally started. I exited for a $50 profit. I think my exit rules need some partial profit taking.
When things reversed suddenly on what appears to be Tarp 2 news, I loaded up on financials.
FAS – Two swings of over $200 on each. Entered at $7.80 if I had stayed put, I would of made nearly $1K. Happy with $470.
C, FITB, and KEY – made most of that in KEY, I got nervous having all these positions open so I only made $100 on these.
The lessons today:
1) Ride the runners fueled by news and crowd emotion – I didn’t want to lose my paper profits so I jumped way early on FAS, C, FITB and KEY. It was totally emotional. I was not looking at my exit rules, it was pure looking at my fake profits and wanting to preserve them.
2) Never double down. I came very close to shorting 1,000 more shares of XL when it went back over $4, and I would had a big loss because I probably would of waited too long to exit. It’s always been against my rules, but I did in the CP Stock Contest with shorting KEY earlier in the week, and I really won out on it – gonna stick to this rule and cut loses quickly, never double a losing position.
I’m long 1000 paper shares of FAS @ $8.73 overnight – I bought at EOD betting on a gap up and stimulus bill passing.
