Friday, January 7, 2011

$MSFT $NVDA . "Work needed on exits." Repeat 1000 times.

- The $DIS trade I blogged about yesterday ended well as I covered at 39.52 (30 cent gain)http://jpotrading.blogspot.com/2011/01/dis-do-your-homework.html

- More importantly I took to heart my own advise of looking for "easier" breakout trades. At 14.00 I wrote in my journal "time to look for pops" and this led to successful trades in $MSFT and $NVDA .

- So, looking for strong stocks I bought $MSFT 28.56 (14:09) and sold it 28.65 (14.49).



- Thoughts: Well done for the effort...totally unnatural for me to do these momentum trades. (Gotta do more) . Horrible exit. There was no reason to exit the trade when I did. I wrote in my blog "market falling and making me nervous" . Well the correct thing would have been a trailing stop at or slightly above my entry.




-My quest for "poppers" then led me to$NVDA. My shorting instincts almost got the better of me at the point shown in the chart.
-Thankfully I did not and went long as shown in the chart. Also set the stop to my entry point and therefore did not get shaken out when it pulled back....but could not resist selling at 19.09 . Bad move...look at all the money I left on the table...and again a reasonable stop would have kept me in the trade.

-This problem with my exits is recurring . Had the same problem with $RL and SBUX and $BBBY earlier in the week . http://jpotrading.blogspot.com/2011/01/rl-work-needed-on-your-exit-points.html

2 comments:

  1. I so know that feeling.. I am working through the same stop and profit taking issues..You might consider reading "Trading the Zone" by Mark Douglas..I just rechecked the book out yesterday for a second read....btw..your blog is great.

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  2. Thkxs so much. Will take a look at that book again. I owned it many years ago...but honestly can´t remember its message.

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