Week 8 Summary

First off, wow .... what a storm last night. It honestly sounded like a tornado was passing over my house at 3am. I had the unfortunate opportunity to experience a tornado in Nebraska when I was younger, and everything I remember about the experience was replayed last night. Pretty scary!

OK ... so after my "downer" of a post last time, I have to say I turned things around a bit this week in terms of trading. This was the first week I ended up net positive since I have been there! Now, mind you, I was only up $80, but I will take small victories where I can get them. Perhaps only having one night of volleyball practice this week had something to do with it ... I don't know. Honestly, I think I am ready for a break from that for a little while.

Anyway, here is a summary of the rest of the days:

Tuesday:
I stuggled. None of the stocks were trending or reverting according to what I thought. I remember trading a lot, but I think I ended up down atound $70.

Wednesday:
I told myself I was going to be more selective in my entries and exits. I did not want to trade as much and only pick the good opportunities. I traded half the number of shares I did on Tuesday, and ended the day positive for about $30. I was pretty happy with that.
Wednesday ended up being a pretty crazy day for the company all in all. It was the second highest grossing day ever and one trader in particular had a phenomenal day. He mainly trades BRK.A shares. If you take a look at this symbol on Yahoo Finance, you will see that the share price is around $85.000/share! Needless to say, this trader had been trying to pick the bottom of BRK.A for weeks. He was in a total of 35 shares. (You do the math as to how much capital was at stake). He had gone down several weeks in a row of several thousand dollars.
However, Wednesday was his payday. If you look at the chart, you see the stock ended making a blast upward. His net profit on the day $55,000! In one day! No doubt, he had to endure some pain to get there, but he got there.

Thusrday:
Apparently, Thursday was the "perfect storm" when it came to the trading group. This ended up being the best day in the company's history, netting nearly half a million dollars in one day! There were probably about 15-20 traders who netted over $10K each! Unbelievable!
For me, it was my best day ever. I was up right around $200. Honestly, it should have been a lot more, but I cut my winners off way too early. I was happy though because my losers were small. One trade in particular "paid" me, so to speak. I sold LEH short at the very high of the day and rode it down for over 2 points!
Today, I saw someone top the net profit from the trader yesterday. One trader in one day netted $75,000! Simply amazing!
Needless to say, after the performance the past two days, the company decided to sponsor a happy hour at Freddie's Place in South Austin. I attended even though I had volleyball practice that night. It was great to go there and get to know other traders. I felt like I fit right in.

Friday:
I think I ended the day down around $30. It wasn't nearly as good a day as the day before. Half the really good traders didn't even make it in. They extended the happy hour into late night activities and were too tired. One of them held an overnight position for a profit of $6,000. He doesn't even show up for work and makes 6 G's. This line of work is totally crazy, but I am glad I have given myself an opportunity to go for it!
One really good/sad story. I decided to trade LEH again today after I made my money in it yesterday. I just like the way it moved and trended. Very similar to my trading style. I sold the stock short again at the very top of the day. Needless to say, this could have been a very good trade. Instead, I got freaked out after the stock went lower 40 cents. I just didn't think it would fall the way it did yesterday, so I got out -- a 40 cent winner. Not bad, but not good either. The stock trended down for the entire day -- 7 points! For me that is a $700 winner versus a $40 winner. Micro-management sucks! Other traders tell me I need to make my orders, place my stops and walk away. They like the way I trade, but say I am too active/anxious once I get in a position. That is something I will work on next week.

This weekend I am going to work with the software program I bought and refine some of my entry and exit strategies. I need to be more mechanical in my trading. I keep saying that, people keep telling me that, but I have sit down, look at old data and train myself to know what a chart looks like at the moment I am having to make my decision.

So, all in all, a good week for me. I am definitely not complaining.