Posted by Deb | Uncategorized | Friday 3 September 2010 5:36 pm
This will be a very short post, as I have lots to do today – the Shabbat is approaching quickly, and my eldest has his birthday tonight and I have to bake a cake.
Today again it took me 4 tries till the Transact platform worked. The Sierra still has problems and I have to refresh it every few minutes. Anyway when I opened the platform the market was in a correction movement, going down after a very big climb up. First I put a limit order with 2 contracts, but then got scared and changed it to one. When it finally caught I decided to add a contract (at last I am adding a contract to a winning position!). Another 3 minutes passed and I quit with $75 profit. Again, waiting a bit longer would have yielded another $37.5-$50, but that was enough for me for today.
I really don’t have much to report today. As the title says, more of the same: My internet connection is still a little problematic, but functional: After about 3 tries I got a good connection. The Sierra also has yet its problems, every few minutes I refresh the connection to update the graphs.
The market isn’t moving much, so I got $50 on 3 contracts.
I do want to write more about the book I am reading. I feel I am getting many insights from it, and I will have to reread it a few times. I will write about it some other time when I have more time.
As I am writing now the market is finally going down, so I could have made better profit on the position I was in. Though I don’t think I did a mistake: The market was stuck on the same place for too long, till I was not sure any more what direction it will take. It was a matter of gambling, and currently, with the small account I have, I don’t feel like gambling even on the demo.
There is still something wrong with my internet connection. I assume it is either some bug in the Transact application on in my pc’s networking setting. In the last few days, I have had to close and re-open the Transact a few times till a good connection was established. After about 5 tries today I was almost going to give up and try later, but then it suddenly worked.
I then proceeded to open the financial reports calendar and saw there was one scheduled to 17:00 and a second to 17:30 today (Israel time. That was 10:00 and 10:30 NY time). Since the time was already 16:45, I wasn’t sure what to do, but decided to try anyway for a few minutes. During the first few minutes the market was confusing, and I didn’t know what to do. Finally I opened a short position with 2 contracts, and after about 2 minutes exited on the first contract on one pips, and wasn’t sure what to do with the other. The market was going against me, but not too much. As I have decided not to let my losses grow I thought of quitting, but the loss didn’t pass the $50. Finally the market went down, but not much. I decided to quit on a small profit of $25, as the time of the financial report was coming up quickly. I was hesitating as I remembered what I wrote about yesterday, of “making a profit in spoons” – I do have to learn not to quit winning positons too quickly. I decided I should still be cautious, so I quit, just to see a quick downfall of the market that would have given me a better profit.
Than the financial report came, and WOW!! The market was climbing up very fast. I was waiting for it to stabalize, but then thought: why shouldn’t I gain of this climbing? I decided to jump on the bandwagon and get some profit. I was afraid that probably if I’ll try to jump on it, it would be just the point when the market will decide to stop climbing, and indeed it seemed to do so at the first few minutes. Then it climbed up more. As always, I quit quickly and got only an additional $25. After that, the market went down, and up again. As I am writing now the market is again much higher. Anyway, the bottom line today is $62.5 on 3 contracts.
Posted by Deb | Uncategorized | Tuesday 31 August 2010 10:45 pm
I had another small profit today. $50 on 2 contracts. Not much really.
On the first position I could have gotten more. I quit too early, with only $37.5. In the second I position I think quit just on the right time – just before the market turned around and potentially making my position a losing one.
I don’t mind having for now only spoon profits (see my last post if you do not know what I am speaking about). I only wish I could stay away from the bucket losses!
Is that the exact quote? I am not sure. Anyway it conveys my situation, and as I understand the situation of many other beginning traders. When we make profit, we make it in small amounts, quiting our winning positions too quickly being afraid to lose the profit we have made so far. When in losing positions, we don’t want to quit and make the loss final. We hope the market will turn around and make the position profitable. We sit and wait and wait, till the loss becomes too unbearable, or till our broker locks us out.
Yesterday it happened to me on the demo. It wasn’t a good time for trading: I spent all day with my kids (school finally starts tomorrow. Hurray!). I came home at 20:45 with my two little ones, very tired after a day with many adventures. Found out my oldest had not yet taken out the dog, so I went out with her immediately. Than I had to fix up supper for the same boy, who couldn’t find himself anything to eat by himself before I came back. He came back home earlier straight from a birthday party where he had pizza and snacks, but that isn’t enough for an pre-adolscent 12-year-old.
When I finally got to open the trading platfrom it was about 21:30 (9:30 PM for you Americans). I was tired, and in the middle of making supper. I didn’t have time to sit near the pc, so the position exited without me with a not-so-bad loss ($75). When I came back and saw it I wanted to try again. I was tired, didn’t evaluate the situation correctly, and went in with a long position although it was already a down-day (what is refered to as a bears market).
The position made a little profit in the begining, but as it was the demo my limit order didn’t catch (in the demo they make your order the last in queue). Then the market turned down. I added more positions to this losing position (another big mistake), didn’t quit and let it lose and lose till it got to -$650.
When will I learn?
I haven’t put here any political film for a while. So here is one for today:
Today all went well. Well, actually, when I first opened the platform it froze again, and I started thinking to myself: Oh no, more internet connection problems. But I closed it and opened again, and again, and on the third time all worked well.
I entered a position rather quickly, and went out in about 4 minutes. As always, I quit a bit to early, so I made only $75 over 2 contracts, instead of the $150 I could. That doesn’t matter right now, as I am just playing with it for now, trying to have as much success days as I can. I am not sure when exactly I will go back to live trade, but I assume it will be in another 2-3 weeks or something like that. Meantime I am working on getting myself other sources of income, as I had decided it is healthy for me right now to rely on trading as a source of income. I want to have the freedom to play with it for a while, without the pressure of having to make a living from it.
I am still reading the book I wrote about, “Mind Games”. I am not sure I agree with everything they say there, but I do enjoy this book. I hope to bring here more insights from this book in the next few days.
To my surprise and gratitude, today everything worked ok! I got my Transact platform up and running with no difficulties, got my Sierra charts up, had a quick trade, and all went all. I quit the position too early (no big surprise, ha?) but got $50 on 2 contracts, which is ok for now. As long as I have some profit, I am happy for now. I only want to see how I can profit, and do it quickly (I hope not to have too long positions). Today’s position took about 7 minutes.
My daughter wants me to take her to the mall now, and is making her wish very clear (she is 8 year old, and banging on the door), so I’ll have to make this short for today.
