Market Close

Didn’t do much today…bought some AAPL on the dip and sold it at the close. I was a bit hesitant to sell since AAPL is only a few dollars from a break-out to fresh all-time highs, but I decided it was best to sell into the resistance (prior highs). I will buy it only if it breaks to new highs (on good volume).
Bought some DUG today, bought am down a bit on that one.
Pretty boring day.
Hope everyone had a great weekend.

Isn’t it interesting how $129/barrel oil all of the sudden sounds good? Do you see the USD and oil diverging long term or short term?

To Noel, you must consider time horizons when comparing trades. APPL is one of those trades where short term trades may go long while long term trades may go short on this one. Please remember your manners. You shouldn’t misplace your frustrations in this way.

Noel –

Easy…. I will try to pull off some bad trades for you soon.

Of course I make good trades “and” bad trades. They are all posted here. I generally post entries and exits the day that I make them. You have to read all of the postings to pick this up. I don’t trade frequently. I have been “mostly” cash since February.

Here are some examples for you. The last trade (other than today’s) I posted was a purchase of DUG. It is in the blog of May 22nd under the subject title Market Close. In that blog I state that I am going to purchase DUG at the market open on May 23. Well…look at the price of DUG at the open that day. It is about $27.40. I have not closed that trade so you know where I stand with that trade. It is very clear. When I close the trade, I will post it.

Do a RT search on MU and you will see “exactly” when I entered and exited MU. I posted the exit within hours of the sale. The problem is that following trades on this site is difficult. It is not designed to track individual trades of each poster. You have to drill down into the individual comments. I don’t have an easy way of showing the overall picture.

As for losers…you can find them here too. Check the post on May 14 titled Oil Inventory. In there I mention that if POT closes above $200 I will close out the position with a 5 to 6% “loss”. I gave a precise exit strategy. Well, it obviously did close above $200, and I stopped out with a loss. Once again, very clear.

Other losers…in this very thread…look at the first post. I added to my DUG position today, but I noted that I am “down” on the day for that particular buy. Unfortunately I had a typo that made it harder to understand this.

Bottom line….I post almost all of my trades, winners and losers. I have had a really good year. It certainly doesn’t mean that I have it figured out, or will continue to do this well. In fact, I probably won’t. I do this just for fun. I don’t claim to be an expert trader. Yeah..I am doing well since August of last year, but I won’t assume that past results are any indication of future performance.

Biggest mistakes…I will list three of the top 100… 1) I bought a stock called CPNE around March of 2007 for $3.00 per share based on the “fundamentals” and sold it for .80 in July 2007 2) Missing almost all of the run-up in the commodities and agricultural stocks. It has been a massive multi-year trend and I did not recognize it early enough. 3) Missing virtually the entire run up in the energy sector. Another major run up while I was just sitting in cash.

Like Chris mentions…trading is all about time horizons. Chuck is a good trader and AAPL “will” go down eventually. That is why I entered AAPL purely as a “daytrade”. In and out. Chuck did not attempt to predict when AAPL may roll over. Also, I may not always agree with Chuck. Even Chuck will occasionally miss one.

Feel free to not read my postings if they bore you. I won’t be offended. Really. If you want more details around my specific trades and have a better method, let me know. I am happy to share..