Recap

 

Recap

Not to much happened today that makes me have much to say, I think CNBC and the rest of the news will tall you all about it. We are just continuing the established trend. We had a nice set up yesterday to go long today in the market. I just can’t help but to think this doesn’t feel right. Its like I’m searching for a reason or indicator to justify my thoughts. I know how well that tends to work out for me.

For 10-4-06

The DJIA is the obvious winner in all this while the NASDAQ just fails to come along for the party. Gold takes a good smack down near the 575 support area, all in one day. Oil seems to be taking all the war premium out in a few months, I feel safer. The US $ just keeps winding itself up to a crazy tight range. I think I agree with the experts here – do you believe the bonds outlook for the economy, or do you listen to stocks? This answer will come hard and fast during earning season.

Strong Areas – Last Month:
Home Furnishing Stores, Auto Parts Stores, Electronic Stores, Major Airlines, Sporting Good Stores, Textile – Apparel Footwear, Catalog & Mail Order, Printed Circuit Boards, Discount Stores, Apparel Stores

GCO, CBK, GPS, AEOS, CHRS, ANF, MW, JNY, BJ, WMT, FLEX, JBL, CROX, COH, NKE, BBY, ORLY

Nice Looking Tau Long Stocks:
TWTC, SEIC

Weak Areas – Last Month:
Medical Practitioners, Silver & Gold, Oil & Gas Stuff, Industrial Metals, General Contractors, Drug Stores, Energy, Medical Labs

CHAP, STLD

Nice Looking Tau Short Stocks:

RS

Interesting Tight:

AAWW, HAE, CERN, UIC, AMN, IDXX

Understanding Myself at the Start

A big part of making it in any job is ambition and capitalizing on your strengths. Trading can be a tough job when trying to asses your strengths and weakness. It seems once a person has a large enough sample size you could pour through you records, given that you have keep any records, to see what you could discover. But what are you suppose to do during the learning curve when you don’t have a large enough sample size. The one thing you don’t want to do is base a bunch of trading rules around three trades. This is what all to many traders seem to do.

I guess you could start with the basics:

Risk Control – track your trades in such a way you see how many times you lose more than what your initial risk was. You could also track each mistake and put a $ sign on it to show you what it cost – as in this article.

Following the Plan – This is probably best thought of as a living organism, something that will change overtime. Lay your starting plan on the table and make adjustments to it as your trading experience grows. I wonder how much trading failures are simply related to the fact we as humans refuse to learn from our mistakes. That number could be scary.

Start – Start with very few shares until you get at least 25 to 50 trades under your belt to start looking things over.

It might be nice if you had a fellow trader look over your trades to give you a third person point of view.