Nursing My Wounds

Ok I'll admit it. I am still nursing my wounds from options expiration last week. I should never have held overnight. Then, after the gap down (instead of up, as I had surmised), I should have sold at the open. No, I continued to hold, hoping for a rally, and letting losses mount. Soon I found myself in that lonely place where I am seeing time decay tick away -- and I am still there like a deer in the headlights, hoping for a rally. About the only good decision I made last week was to take my losses like a man late Thursday, instead of waiting until late Friday. I learned that the hard way. I distinctly remember a day in January when my APPL calls literally went to zero on a Friday afternoon, while I was on the phone with E*Trade hoping for some consolation from the trading desk. 

Psychological research states that it takes about 7 times of making a mistake over and over again until we finally get it. Well maybe more. I even some rules surrounding options week in my trading rules, but I did not actually consult my rules before trading last week.  Well rules are no good if they are aren't followed. 

OK well by now it is clear that I am no pro - this will be the blog of someone who is in the midst of learning. I got interested in stock investing for the first time in mid-2007, and then trading in the fall of 2007, so it's been about 15 months so far. I started off with E*Trade and no live quotes, and have since changed brokers to ThinkorSwim (TOS) which has free level 2 quotes and live streaming Prophet charts, as well as much lower commissions. I now have a set of stock-trading rules - even if I don't yet stick to them. I'm pretty determined, and once I get a lot better someone will be able to dig through these old posts and relate to all the newbie mistakes.

At some point soon, I'll start posting actual entry/exit points and profits/losses, but for now I will just describe things.