Taking $5K to 25K by the end of the year

Interesting Journal.

A couple comments from the peanut gallery:

Quote from jazzsax:

Overall, today was fairly good, other than one bad trade, just caught a bad move in a stock I was holding, exited at my stop. Followed my rules today, followed stops, didn't let any trades break my loss limit. If the one bad trade (near the end of the day, in the last 10 minutes) hadn't occured, I'd have been up more.
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Don’t look at it as a bad trade. If you followed your rules for entry and exits it was a good trade with less than optimum results.

Better day. Waited and watch a bit after the open. Missed a few exits on one set of trades that would have improved the overall numbers, but in general I was more careful about my entries. Can't say I'm too upset. Could have been better, but I'll take what I can get!
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How is it you missed exits? Not following your rules or an execution problem?

Holding a large position in a stock over the weekend that I'm hoping takes a jump monday morning. Could payoff well if it makes the move I think it's going to make. Probably breaking my rules here, but I had to run to the Blue Jays home opener yesterday and I didn't want to exit the position! (LOL)
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Hoping and Breaking your rules will lead you to the poor house.:mad:
 
jazzsax, you have made a very good start - congrats. Just wondering if you have different MM for your bigger plays - you mention AAPL and RIMM for instance. A $200 stop wouldn't last long with these I would have thought. Also, you mention you have problems of discipline with stops - are you using 'mental' stops or does widening hard-stops contribute to this?
 
Thanks for the comments.

My biggest problem to date has been using "mental" stops, rather than physically setting them. I'm still figuring out bracket orders on this platform, so when I've said I've "missed" exit points, it's mostly been because I had mentally had an exit point set, and the stock wouldn't be moving, out of the blue would move through that point, then back down again... had I set the orders in place already, I'd have exited as planned.

It's discipline really, more often than not I mentally decide where my stops are on each trade, but haven't been disciplined enough to enter them off the hop.

As for AAPL and RIMM, obviously I trade smaller lots, but I tend to trade for smaller gains in those stocks. Doesn't take much given how much they move.
 
hey jazzsax,

awesome thread! i've been following it since the start. i was curious as to your selection criteria for stocks, as well as how you are picking your entry and exits.

thanx!
 
My selection criteria is a mix... I look for highly liquid stocks that tend to *not* trade in a tight band. Even some of the low priced stocks like AMD/ETFC and others will trade up or down 2-4% in a day. On top of that I use technicals to try find entry and exit points.
 
This week -

Again, not too many trades (under 10). Seems to be the key to me having better weeks!

Mostly stuck with smaller $ value stocks, stayed away from RIMM and AAPL though if I would have gone in, would have had some nice gains.

Had two "losers" but what counts is I followed my rules and got out when I knew I should.

End of the week was very positive.

Balance as of April 18 - $7,629.39
Balance as of April 11 - $6,503.10

TOtal Gain for the week - $1,126.29

Target for the week was to be at $7,000 so I've met that again and have a buffer for this week. Weekly target has been $500 consistently to meet my goal of 25K at the end of the year.

Next week will be light on trading, will only be trading Monday-Wednesday as I'm taking thursday and friday off for some rest and recharge.
 

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Light trading last week, no blotter. Goal for end of the week was $7500 to be on pace. Was somewhere around that range.

This week has been a full week of trading, will post results by end of tomorrow along with blotter. Goal to be on target is $8000 as of May 2nd.
 
ANother good week, was a full week of trading. Not much trading on Monday tuesday, quite a few more trades thursday and friday.

Best trades - EMKR (catching a big piece of the jump on friday), as well as FSLR (catching the jump from thursday to friday).

Was up to the point where I could actually trade a full sized lot of FSLR given the price.

Worst trades - end of day friday, in and out of AMZN, totally misread the price action.

Learning from my mistakes in general, I seem to be trading alot less than when I started this journal. I'm probably around 10-15 RT trades per week now tops, versus around 20 per day at the start of the hournal.

THis week should be interestin on monday with YHOO fallout... I'm hoping it's a bloodbath for them and great for GOOG!

TARGET FOR MAY 2ND - $8,000
ACTUAL FOR MAY 2nD - $8755 (aprox).

Gives me a buffer for next week!
 

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