Stenzrob's specials

Bought ININ at $27.

Bought AVAV $24.06.

Bought SIGM $60.

Just to show how green I am, CMC dropped to my stop loss of 12%. I had no idea that their Earning Report was the next day and was supposed to be a good report, supposedly. Along with the divident payout. Had I kept it, I would have easily made 20+% instead.

It was good that I took the profit, but....

I have the discipline, just not the knowledge

Discipline is worth more than knowledge, IMHO. The market is filled with too much apparent irrationality for knowledge to be of much use, especially in the short term. If it is generally expected that an earnings report will be a good one, then the price may be bid up prior to the report, and then even one that exceeds the official estimates can be met with selling because it did not exceed by as much as was really expected, or because the guidance is fuzzy, or that as good as the results were, it is now believed that they can't keep up that pace, etc. etc.
CMC dropped to your stop loss and you acted on your discipline. Sure, looking back now, you could have made 20+%, but you could just as easily be sitting on a loss. I seek a balance between not letting selective hindsight get in the way of sticking to the discipline and learning from what has worked well or not in past trades.

Looking back over my recent stopped-out exits; EXAS, WATG, ALTI, ZRAN, NTWK, AVAV, AOB, and WFR are all lower now than where I was stopped out. Only VOCS and NUVA are slightly higher (but I made more money trading others than if I had held either or both). Could I have predicted which of these would continue up or reverse? I don't think so.

Where could I have made more money, sometimes significantly more, than when I sold? When I sold because I thought it wasn't going to go any higher. When have I lost big money in the past year? When I thought the stock (or QID) should come back. So I decided to stop thinking so much, other than to think about how best to not think. (LOL!) Lest I think too little of myself, my previous approach was profitable and beating the market, which I track. But, I continuously seek to learn how to do better. My initial goal was to have positive return and beat the market. 2000 was an interesting time to start trading. I had positive returns in 2002, and have beaten the market every year since then. So, it is time to adjust my goal. I'm still working on what it should be.

[Odysseus]

First of all...WELCOME!!!

Second of all...I suggest that you lower your goals to a more realistic level. 5% a week compounded for 52 weeks is over 1100% a year.

I'm all for setting high goals...but that should be at least set at a level that might be attainable.

Best,

Doug(IIC)

Yeah, I've recently taken a step back and have made my first goal to try and learn more, and hope to make +% for the end of the year. Then I'd be happy. And my wife would not criticize my trying

Thank you by the way, glad to be here. I've been searching the web for a stock forum that has good folks, who offer critiquing without the utter smackdowns I see a lot on the Yahoo message boards.

Stopped out of WATG for a small profit, and while it certainly looks now like it would have been better to hold, it could just as well have kept going the other way, leaving me sitting on a loss hoping for it to get back above water. I hate that feeling. Stopped out of WFR at 71.50 for an 11.8% gain.

Yeah stenzrob, I did the same thing with CMC. Just to show how green I am, CMC dropped to my stop loss of 12%. I had no idea that their Earning Report was the next day and was supposed to be a good report, supposedly. Along with the divident payout. Had I kept it, I would have easily made 20+% instead.

It was good that I took the profit, but....

I have the discipline, just not the knowledge

[IIC]

Yes please stenzrob, keep the posts coming. I'm trying to make just 5% a week and was doing great, but have made some sloppy errors since.

Only been at this since August and trying to narrow down my mistakes since I have so little to play with. I've been studying anything I can find, ChartSchool.com was great.

Currently going long with

VDSI
FRX

I lost big on VDSI and FRX, but am nearly breaking even with FRX finally. I was doing so well shorting YBTVA, WYNN, and CMC, now I've lost all my gains from these 2 stocks above.

First of all...WELCOME!!!

Second of all...I suggest that you lower your goals to a more realistic level. 5% a week compounded for 52 weeks is over 1100% a year.

I'm all for setting high goals...but that should be at least set at a level that might be attainable.

Best,

Doug(IIC)

[IIC]

I've only been doing this since early 2000, and still trying to figure out how the heck this stuff works. I think that in trading, you learn a little about the market and a little about yourself as well. I thought I would approach this as a patient investor ... but my attention span has been steadily decreasing. Having read about all the classic stupid mistakes, I found that I made pretty much every one, and it is a constant struggle to make myself not make them again and again. One thing that I think I may have learned (and how many places did I read this, and how many times did I do it anyway?!) is to not let a profit turn into a loss, or to even give up a significant piece of it. Hence, my newfound fascination with stop loss and trailing stops. I was stopped out of both WFR and WATG today, and both are now sitting above where I was thrown out of them. That does not bother me in the least. Stopped out of WATG for a small profit, and while it certainly looks now like it would have been better to hold, it could just as well have kept going the other way, leaving me sitting on a loss hoping for it to get back above water. I hate that feeling. Stopped out of WFR at 71.50 for an 11.8% gain.

The only position I still have now is the LUNA I bought this morning.

I did discover a downside to the daytrading ... my broker told me today that having made 4 daytrades in 5 days, I qualify as a pattern daytrader. Since the account does not have $25k, I may be restricted now to only buying with settled funds. Why it takes 3 days to settle a trade in this day and age, I don't know.

I always read your thread Stenz.

As far as the number of trades...My cash account is not a problem...But we also have 3 separate tax accounts...keeping the 3 separate allows me more dt's per week in the tax accounts if necessary.

Yes please stenzrob, keep the posts coming. I'm trying to make just 5% a week and was doing great, but have made some sloppy errors since.

Only been at this since August and trying to narrow down my mistakes since I have so little to play with. I've been studying anything I can find, ChartSchool.com was great.

Currently going long with

VDSI
FRX

I lost big on VDSI and FRX, but am nearly breaking even with FRX finally. I was doing so well shorting YBTVA, WYNN, and CMC, now I've lost all my gains from these 2 stocks above.

I've only been doing this since early 2000, and still trying to figure out how the heck this stuff works. I think that in trading, you learn a little about the market and a little about yourself as well. I thought I would approach this as a patient investor ... but my attention span has been steadily decreasing. Having read about all the classic stupid mistakes, I found that I made pretty much every one, and it is a constant struggle to make myself not make them again and again. One thing that I think I may have learned (and how many places did I read this, and how many times did I do it anyway?!) is to not let a profit turn into a loss, or to even give up a significant piece of it. Hence, my newfound fascination with stop loss and trailing stops. I was stopped out of both WFR and WATG today, and both are now sitting above where I was thrown out of them. That does not bother me in the least. Stopped out of WATG for a small profit, and while it certainly looks now like it would have been better to hold, it could just as well have kept going the other way, leaving me sitting on a loss hoping for it to get back above water. I hate that feeling. Stopped out of WFR at 71.50 for an 11.8% gain.

The only position I still have now is the LUNA I bought this morning.

I did discover a downside to the daytrading ... my broker told me today that having made 4 daytrades in 5 days, I qualify as a pattern daytrader. Since the account does not have $25k, I may be restricted now to only buying with settled funds. Why it takes 3 days to settle a trade in this day and age, I don't know.

[Odysseus]

Yes please stenzrob, keep the posts coming. I'm trying to make just 5% a week and was doing great, but have made some sloppy errors since.

Only been at this since August and trying to narrow down my mistakes since I have so little to play with. I've been studying anything I can find, ChartSchool.com was great.

Currently going long with

VDSI
FRX

I lost big on VDSI and FRX, but am nearly breaking even with FRX finally. I was doing so well shorting YBTVA, WYNN, and CMC, now I've lost all my gains from these 2 stocks above.

Bought LUNA for $7.24.

[TNtrader]

I sure have.

I bought WFR at $66.01 and am still holding. I also use trailing stops.

I appreciate the heads up on WFR and your willingness to continue posting your trades. My only other positions at this time are the following, in case you're interested.

Short PRXI at $14. The bottom fell out of this one!
Long QTM at an average cost of $3.76

Thanks again!

I find your thread useful. Please don't stop posting your trades!

OK, I will continue, thanks for reading TNtrader.

The technique for now remains the same; Buy something that's moving up, hope like hell it moves high enough to allow setting a stop that prevents any loss. If it moves up enough, switch to a trailing stop that will automatically get me out when it reverses after topping out. It's working so far.

Tell me, have you made any trades on the stocks that I have posted? Made any trades on other stocks using this technique?

[TNtrader]

I find your thread useful. Please don't stop posting your trades!

I went to a meeting just before 3:00, and came back at 4:10 to find that stops had triggered to sell NTWK and AOB in my cash (+margin) account, and ALTI in the IRA. The IRA does not support trailing stops, that only works in my cash account.

NTWK: Buy on 10/29 at $4.29, sell on 10/30 at $4.36 (+1.6%)
AOB: Buy on 10/30 at $13.25, sell on 10/30 at $13.6533 (+3.0%)
ALTI: Buy on 10/25 at $4.69, sell on 10/30 at $4.94 (+5.3%)

Still holding WFR from $63.95, now about +14% at $72.97, stop set at $71.50
Still holding WATG from $8.75, now about +4.9% at $9.18, no stop set yet.

Gain in the cash account is now +45.9% since 10/8, 9 trades over 12 trading days, varying from +1% on ZRAN to +18.6% on ALTI.

I'm going to stop posting my trades, etc. now, unless something unusual happens to learn from.

[billyjoe]

billyjoe, Have you compared ZRAN to SIGM?

Stenz,
SIGM somehow flew under my radar. I just ran the numbers and it's real good, awesome earnings, and would have finished at #24 just above NDAQ.

---------------billyjoe