OK, forgive me for the title of this post. 

I made 2R on the day, with KONG doing the heavy lifting.  I was stopped out of CBAK.  Here’s the chart of KONG.  I’m continuing to make more discoveries and improvements to my system which really has me motivated right now.

I hope your trading went well today!

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A -3R day today.  Looking back I wouldn’t do much differently probably.  I probably would have skipped CPSL.  These losses are part of the game, though.  I knew that when I decided to start trading more opportunities that there would be days like this.  Here are the charts:

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I’d always heard about trading halts, but never had the bad luck to experience one.  I entered HAR early on in the day and it gained momentum down throughout the day.  I covered a third around the Fibonacci extension and put in a loose stop hoping to cover at the close.

It had another leg down and it turned into my best trade ever in terms of dollars.  Then Eyal noticed some strangeness around 3:13PM.  Eek!  It had halted!

I searched around trying to figure out what was going on.  Here’s NASDAQ’s page of current halts which confirmed it.  Dang.  This is the first time I’ve experienced this and it was no fun.  Luckily I had scaled out and my position was relatively small.  There was also lots of negative news coming out (or at least it seemed negative to someone who completely ignores fundamentals ).

After my “cover at market close” order triggered and failed just before the close I was fully expecting to get burned - a sleepless weekend followed by a big loss at the open on Monday.  Or a windfall, but hey, these big surprises are why I stopped holding overnight - at least I that’s what I thought!

Very luckily, HAR started trading again at 4:02PM - gapping down, thank goodness.  I covered pretty quickly.  Whew.

Any other traders out there get caught by this?  Eyal did.

Here’s a chart and the chart review (with a couple bad ticks):

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We’ve recently added a great feature that will help new users get started right off the bat.  You can now import your trading history into StockTickr using a simple form.  If you’ve neglected to keep a trading journal this is a great way to catch up and access all the eye-opening reports that are available in StockTickr.  Here’s how it works:

1. Export your trades from any Penson based broker (CyberTrader, MBTrading, many others) or Interactive Brokers using their simple and quick reporting sites.
2. Go to the Bulk Import page in StockTickr and point to the file you generated.
3. Specify the account value and risk numbers you used for your trades and click Upload Now.

The process is really simple and works very well.  Here are some benefits:

1. StockTickr matches your “executions” into “trades” and knows which executions correspond to different order types: Buy, Buy to Cover, Short, Sell, Scale In, or Scale Out.
2. StockTickr automatically determines which trades you have already entered in your journal and imports only the new trades (even if you’ve opened a position in StockTickr and haven’t closed it yet).
3. StockTickr gives a reasonable default stop value based on the parameters you enter on the initial import screen.
4. You can specify tags for each trade or use the default tags that you specify in your StockTickr Profile.
5. Most of the StockTickr Broker Plugins can access only your most recent trading day’s executions - the Bulk Import tool can be used to import your entire trading history.
6. The StockTickr Chart Review is generated for each trade so you can see your entry, stop, and exit points plotted right on the chart.

Your imported trades are assigned the “import” tag so you can easily identify them within StockTickr, so you can include them or exclude them in any reports you run.

Update: I was reminded by a subscriber that we forgot to add a link for it. We just added one here in the reports section:

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I had high hopes that we’d see some good movement yesterday in the market after the Bernanke bailout on Tuesday (hat tip to Mike).  It looks like all the movement was in the half hour after the announcement.

Even with over a hundred long gaps on my initial list yesterday, nothing showed up on my trading radar as tradeable.  It’s days like these where you get paid to shut down the trading screen.  There’s a temptation to keep the charts up and wait for entries to come along, but I’ve found for my style of trading it’s never a good idea.

Hopefully you found something good to trade!

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After the longest stretch of lackluster market action that I can remember, I took two trades today.  One was a long position in BIDU which I was stopped out of only to see it explode through the end of the day.  It looks like Zoomie was able to time this one correctly.

I asked CyberTrader if they were able to locate some shares that I could borrow to short IRBT.  It looks like IB didn’t have any at the time, either.  They found a few for me and I made 1R or so.

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Here’s another article I wrote for the CyberTrader monthly newsletter called Streamline Your Trading Routine Using Automation.  It describes the process I go through to automate as many tasks as possible in my daily trading routine.

There is always room for improvement in your routine and automating certain aspects of your day will prevent mistakes and free your time for more important tasks.

Here’s the first article I wrote a while back.

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Only one stock made my watchlist today - IMCL.  It did a whole lot of nothing and I was stopped out at breakeven.  It’s been very slow the past couple of days, although some have been finding opportunities.

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I had an order that didn’t get filled.  The market action wasn’t great today.  There just wasn’t much gusto behind that gap up at the open - I only had two stocks that even made the watchlist cut today and they broke down quickly.

I shut down my trading platform at 10:25AM or so - that’s the earliest I can remember giving up on a trading day.

Perhaps you found some opportunities out there today, although the pickin’s certainly seemed slim for a lot of people.

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Several weeks ago I wrote an article for the CyberTrader Monthly Newsletter.  I’ve gotten a lot of good comments on it so I thought I’d post a link to it here.  It’s called How a Trading Journal Can Make You a Better Trader.

I talk about how I analyze my version of the Dummy Trading system and how I’ve been able to uncover some hidden mistakes in my trading, including my 11AM trading mystery.

I’ve since written another article that’s just been published.  I’ll post a link to that one tomorrow.  It’s called Streamline Your Trading Routine Using Automation.

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