Added a blog of another trader on a journey

Here is another great blog of a fellow learner posting their journey...

http://www.lauratrading.blogspot.com/

Having trouble again graciously accepting small losses.

Today I was in MGM, had entered with options at about 12.50 from a few days ago. As this selloff hapened late in the day, I kept thinking it was a fakeout for a rally into the close, like it has been for some time. However this time, it was an honest-to-goodness selloff. MGM started breaking the good setup and while it did not hit my very liberal stop of 11.99, it almost did, and so I sold it manually. I lost about 40% of the value of the call, across 4 calls, and it hurt, after a good week of disciplined trading. If I had just been able to accept a $1 gain, or a $13 loss, I could have sold those options a day or 2 ago. No, instead I held, wanting to prove that I "WAS RIGHT" and I was excited that hey this was MGM, and I was going to Vegas soon, and isn't it cool to be in a gambling stock, it's just like gambling. Truer than I wanted it to be!! After summarizing my trades for the week and my various accounts a little early, I looked at my performance. I broke out trades as either "Stewie" (from his service/alerts) and non-Stewie (my own, or from his chat room for members). I think the problem is that I am not good enough with setting stops to set them tight enough on my own trades. I make them very loose liberal, so that they don't get hit, and then guess what ... they get hit anyway, and I get depressed. So for now, I need to follow others on no only the exit, but pay attention to their exit strategy. Foremost, just trade the alerts, but if I absolutely have to make a trade from the chat room, find out what that person is using for a stop point. Because it is the liberal stops and letting the losers run that is killing me in my own trades. I did more analysis and summarized the following:

STEWIE + MY TRADES  IN 8K IRA: +2.9% SINCE DEC 11,2009
STEWIE ONLY TRADES  IN 8K IRA: +8.0% SINCE DEC 11,2009

STEWIE + OWN TRADES IN 2K ACCT: -12.3% SINCE DEC 30,2009
STEWIE ONLY TRADES  IN 2K ACCT: +01.0% SINCE DEC 30,2009
(TRYING TO GET BACK TO EVEN TO MANY TIMES ON MY OWN)

STEWIE ONLY TRADES IN 3K WIFE IRA: +2.8% SINCE MARCH 1
(I DON'T DO NON-STEWIE TRADES IN WIFE IRA-GOOD!)

BOTTOM LINE: I AM MY OWN WORST ENEMY.  MY OWN TRADES SUCK.

LOOKING CLOSER, IT IS NOT THAT I DON'T HAVE WINNERS,  ITS THAT WHEN I HAVE  LOSERS, I REFUSE TO TAKE A LOSS UNTIL THEY HIT A  VERY LIBERAL STOP OR REACH 2% of ACCOUNT SIZE. IT USED TO BE WORSE BUT EVEN WAITING TILL 2% is BAD!!! I NEED TO LEARN THAT *NOT* LOSING IS WINNING. IF YOU CAN'T STOP FROM THE ENEMY SCORING, IT DOESN'T MATTER HOW MANY WEAPONS YOU HAVE ON OFFENSE. I NEED TO GRACIOUSLY ACCEPT SMALL LOSSES. THAT IS THE KEY. IN THE MEANTIME, FOLLOW THE ALERTS SO YOU KNOW BETTER WHAT IS A GOOD STOP LOSS.

Just posted my review of Art of Trading

Well I finished my review of Art of Trading tonight. BTW I am just a regular guy, not getting paid to promote this or anything. I hate how there are so many investment scams and shlocky services out there, even offered by the so-called gurus and pro's. I found out recently that even traders who write books often do it because they aren't good enough at trading itself, and/or weren't respected in the trading community.  In any case Stewie has been a major factor in turning my trading around from non-profitable to profitable. It still isn't easy, and won't be, but Stewie really does accelerate your learning by leaps and bounds.

http://www.investimonials.com/blogs/reviews-the-art-of-trading.aspx#momostocktrader

Some setups II like

ARII
CMA
CTXS
DIVX
HSIC
INCY
MSPD
N
OCLR
PEET
WFC
Y
T



Caveat Empor: Its quadruple witching on Friday, so beware!

Wierd day in the market

Today was bizarre - took a lot of Stewie alerts and by mid-day everything was green by $20 - $80 except a bone-headed AAPL 210 call I bought at the open (me and AAPL, arghghgh) .. then in the last hour everything headed south. Sold two alerts alongside Stewie that were green but basically only paid the commission, and held the 3 he is holding overnight. Someone in the chat room thought something fishy was going on and I believe it. Almost like a bunch of hedge fund guys all called each other and said - "HEY GUYS LETS SELL EVERYTHING DOWN AND PANIC THOSE LONGS - HEHEHEHEH" . Who knows. All I can control is my own trades and my own risk tolerance.We'll see what happens in the morning.

Doing well - getting good at taking small losses

OK I have stayed within my rules and I am doing well. Lately I have been getting really good at taking small losses. What broke the cycle is that I vowed to follow Stewie's alerts religiously for all of my trades, and Stewie has no qualms about jettisoning a stock the second he thinks it is going to lose him money. It could (and often is) well above the stop level - he does not wait until it hits the stop. The stock could start to bear flag, have poor price action, be too choppy, or WHATEVER - he doesn't care. In this sense Stewie reminds me of Larry Ellison of Oracle. Larry knows how to make money, and he buys companies, and makes decisions - all based on the BOTTOM LINE and the goal of MAKING MONEY - as soon as someone or something is not cutting it for that purpose, they get shown the DOOR.

We shouldn't get attached to our stocks - in fact that concept that Peter Lynch had about buying companies we know and admire can actually prevent us from parting with our winners. If you hold a winner long enough, it will become a loser. But  today my old habits didn't prevail.  I personally very attached to AAPL the company, but with some help from a friend holding my hand, I jettisoned  30 AAPL@209 before the closing bell.  I had bought these shares at 189 and held them through the downturn last year, so I had enough profit and was relieved to get rid of them. It was fun to sell into strength, and be profitable. This frees up about 6.5k that I can now use in this same account to focus more on Stewie alerts, yeah!