Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Evening Wrap Up

-$512.00

Today I was guilty of making some terrible trades.


I let a gap-down in SWHC shake me out of a position. Then I re-bought some of the position and got shook out again. I never bothered to check a longterm chart during all of this. Had I done so, I would have seen a nice bounce close to the 20-day. All in all I should have never sold.

Similarly, I let a gap-down and some selling in GIGM shake me out of that position, and then I re-bought it as well. Then, at the close today, I closed out the position again, taking another loss of .08 cents. If I didn't feel good about it earlier, why did I buy it back?

It is strange how last night I was feeling like I needed to make sure I didn't overtrade today. It was as if I could feel it coming. I think maybe because I have had good profits that I'm starting to get too emotional. This past month I've been doing really well trading on technicals and keeping my emotions out of it as much as possible. I blew that today. Going into the morning I was worried about a pullback in the indexes. I let this worry snowball when I realized SWHC would gap-down.

It is crucial to remember when reacting to market events to be calm and emotionless, as much as possible. There is seldom an instance I can remember when a stock does not eventually offer a good exit or a good entry, even though in the heat of battle, it feels like the price wanted will never be attained. Most gaps get filled, and most spikes get sold. I have to remember that generally speaking, being patient will bring a better price for entry or exit than selling or buying because of fear or greed.

All that being said, my patience was rewarded by holding SMSI, which had a man-sized gain of 6.7%

3 comments:

matte351 said...

Take your losses and move on. You are still up nicely for the year.

Ragin' Cajun said...

Wood,

That was a great post, and feel I was guilty of over-trading today!

idlesin said...

Great post! Nice to know that I'm not the only one that reacts like this. Keep up the great work!