Day Trades (100 shares)
HURN #1: $18.2, $18.25 = $3
HURN #2: $18.80, $18.98 = $16
AXL #1: $5.02, $5.1 = $8
AXL #2: $5.22. $5.30 = $6
HURN #4: $18.50, $18.80 = $28
AXL #4: $5.18, $5.30 = $10
HURN #5: $19.10, $18.92 = $14
HURN #6: $19.15. $19.15 = $12
Swing Trades
C #1 (1000 shares): $4 (yesterday), $4.07 = $65
Total Proceeds for today = $135
Working on: Need to learn to let my winners ride more and not get so antsie.
Wow 9/9 positive cash outs today. That is smoking. When you say you need to let your winners ride, does this mean you had exit points in mind and have been taking them down ahead of those points just to lock in gains? Or are you just doing retrospective investing and looking at the prices later and saying "I could have got more?"
ReplyDeleteThe reason I ask is I did this just today. I took those naked options off at .15 that I sold for .60 just minutes before. But the first question I ask myself is, did I just throw away .15, am I going to kick myself three days from now. If I was willing to take on the risk at .60, why not keep it on at .15?
My original exit strategy was to let it ride for 3 days and I'm willing to take ownership of the stock, but when you can take 75% of the profits and eliminate risk in a matter of a few minutes, my plans changed. So obviuosly if I took it down I'm happy with what I got, however, I know I will take a peek on Friday to see if I should've would've could've got another $150 out of the play. I think it's just human nature.
Your trade is different. Were you watching the trade from start to finish? Also were there any other trades you were focusing on?
ReplyDeleteWhen you day trade you are literally watching each tick each second and making snap judgements so quick that you often start second guessing yourself and feeling anxious especially if the stock starts going against you and then comes back up into the positive and just sits there. You begin to say before I watch this thing fall back into the red I would rather just the eject button for a small gain as evident in the less than $10 gains throughout the day. It's pretty common for beginning day traders to cut their winners short and not stick to the plan. I am very good about the downside discipline but need to work on the inverse. I'm still learning through the pain of minor mistakes. Also you are also monitoring and trying to setup other plays at the same time which right now is a little discombobulating. Once I get through this learning curve I should have the confidence I need to calm my nerves and not have such an itchie trigger finger.
I thought that having your exit point on the upside and stop loss on the downside allowed you to not have to get itchy fingers, unless something in the chart or news changes your initial feeling. That part I understand. How many tickers do you feel you can watch simultaneously and still be effective?
ReplyDeleteI find that my tolerance for risk (deciding on when to let things expire versus take them down early) varies with my overall position in life, or maybe my recent portfolio balance history, or recent trade history. Like right now, because of the still fresh memories of last September, I am more than happy to pull things down early and go to bed in cash. Because I feel I might be moving and not have a formal income for another year, that also leads me towards wanting to pull down winners early.
So for me, I don't know that having a strategy will ever alleviate the problems of second guessing or get me to feel like I'm executing at 100% of possible efficiency. I think I need to find a happy medium where the second guessing isn't ruining or affecting my trading, and accepting that there isn't such thing as 100% efficiency without knowing future prices. And ten years later I'm still learning and sometimes repeating past mistakes.
Whole different ballgame day trading is...
ReplyDelete