Comments on: Wow–That Was Some Bad Trading!

By: Andrea

Andrea — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 01:09:08 +0000

I greatly appreciate this post. Most traders with blogs only post their winners, which is unfortunate because everybody knows they have losers they aren’t sharing, and quite frankly new traders could benefit just as much from seeing the losers.

By: Tom

Tom — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 12:07:52 +0000

Hey Steve
Good post, thank you …. i dont know how many times ive seen that trend and said were probably going to get an awsome close and had no idea how to trade it ….keep long until it breaks the trend or takes your target as stated.

By: Soham

Soham — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 09:06:22 +0000

Steve,

May I ask a question which is of much interest to me. Are you purely an order book oriented trader i.e purely tick-trade based or do you refer to charts as well( say of 10seconds or 30seconds)

Soham

By: A

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 02:11:35 +0000

steve, thanks for posting this! i’m rooting for you on monday… let us know how it goes!

By: sspencer

sspencer — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 01:40:06 +0000

Jeff,

The $500 loss was referring to how much it cost me not covering on the pullback to 40.30. unfortunately the total loss was much higher.

The market opening down wasn’t as important to me as the fact that AIG was trading below a longer term support of 39.80. The next major support level was 36.

I did in fact attempt to fade the first move on the open as it popped up to 39.46 before it dropped 2.5pts over the next few minutes.

One of the most common errors i’ve found in those I have interviewed and spoken to over the years is the idea that stocks with large gaps should be faded on the open. If you do a search of our blog you will find that I have discussed previously the correct way to trade stocks intraday that have large gaps.

Steve

By: bob

bob — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 01:33:49 +0000

many thanks for posting that. it really helps those of us trying to get started in the biz to know that even experienced traders can get on the wrong side occasionally.

the market seemed abnormally choppy this week. could it be dueling algo bots?

By: jeff

jeff — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 00:41:24 +0000

steve, your daily stop loss is only $500? you must be incredibly consistent for that to be a “bad” day…

can you explain how the market opening -10pts impacted your bias towards shorting AIG or any other stock off the open?

it seems highly likely that a high beta stock like AIG would be a good candidate for day-traders to fade off the open, no? why did you have such a short bias?

i highly respect you as a trader and this was a great blog entry and would appreciate it if you could explain how the SP futures impact (or don’t impact) how you trade your individual stocks.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 23:33:21 +0000

The worst thing a trader can do is trade without a stop loss on the number of trades he takes in a day. Your brain gets wired to want to make it up and this clouds judgement.

I´ve found that using limit orders to enter half your position and timing the other half via the market is a good way to avoid the slip that triggers a cascade of increasingly deperate bids with no clear exit strategy.

By: IceTrader

IceTrader — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 20:59:59 +0000

Thanks for sharing. Sounds eerily similar to my day in several stocks. I still managed to make some small gains, but this market was brutal today. I just can’t seem to recognize the chop action and thus I continue to trade and get whipsawed on positions. Good luck next week. I’m certain you will rebound. Have a nice weekend.