Today Could Have Been Worse

While it turned out to be dumb to go into today with index shorts, at least they were small positions. I covered them on the first dip after the Helicopter Ben announcement. All in all, I lost about $1,500 on my shorts. However, due to my purchase the other day of SLB and GLD, and my purchase today of VDSI, I finished down for the day only about 500 bucks. Not bad, but I know other traders who went into the day long and made a killing.

So what is my strategy here? Fully, everything I've done over the past 2 weeks has been completely wrong. Keeping that in mind, I'm going to do the opposite of what I want to do. What I want to do is to go on a buying spree tomorrow, so what I will do is mostly nothing. I intend to watch the action tomorrow, possibly establishing a few small, initial positions. I'm finding that starting small positions fulfills my desire to stay in the market, yet allows the position to move against me without causing me any real pain. That is important because usually I sell near the low of the dip. If I can hang on, typically the position moves back into profit, and then I can decide whether I want to add shares.

I intend to continue working on a watchlish of long candidates. Many of them are breakout plays, or pullback plays.

Update: Here is my updated watch list. Some of these are breakout plays, some have broken out and need a pullback, and some have pulled back and might be near a good buy point.

LWAY CSCO MORN BBY SHW TRAK BLUD MA DE AMX TDG PCP DRYS AAPL TBSI HLIT GMST AVCI GILD QMAR