Monday, May 19, 2008

What I learned today...

....I do NOT want to swing trade!! In an attempt at self-sabotage I put in orders for a number of stocks yesterday evening as swing positions. Near the end of the close this afternoon I am out of half of them. I wasn't stopped out of these trades, just took myself out due to today's schizo sell-off. The market behavior just took away any confidence I had in those positions to hold them over night.
My aspirations are to DAY TRADE with consistency. And so, from this point on that is what I will do. Lesson learned.

4 comments:

Stewie said...

hi todd. i never realized you had a blog. that's cool. agree with you about swing trading. today's action will probably set the stage for a bigger correction and will probably setup swingable trades later. good luck.

fufufnik said...

stewie,
welcome! And thanks for stopping by this blog. My positions were going well, until the panic ensued. I bailed on them b/c i believed the probabilities were leaning more towards being stopped out of them. All-in-all I think I did the right thing, and I believe I took responsibility for what little losses I incurred. Cheers!

-todd

Trader M.D. said...

Todd,

I believe swing trading can actually be easier than day trading, but the swing positions you chose need to be in sync with the market.

Monday's price action and us being overbought didn't exactly help with that.

I'm probably not the best swing trader out there, but UCLA trader has a pretty good blog and has been a swing trader for a while.

Going through his older & current examples can be a great learning tool.

http://uclatrader.blogspot.com/

If I was really busy and didn't have the time to look for my own setups, I would consider subscribing to his newsletter type service.

fufufnik said...

Trader M.D.
Thanks for the input. Every day there are lessons to learn. It's great to have complete strangers through the blogosphere (like yourself) share their knowledge so freely. Also, the referral to UCLA's blog, after checking some of it out, looks like a good source. Thanks for leaving a comment. Cheers!

-tdd