Ouch!

First of all, in the interest of caution, I'm going to stop listing the name of the stock that I trade. Well, I'm only trading 100 shares at a time so it's not like I have any major influence on the market but still... there's nothing wrong about being careful.

Yesterday I set a new personal high at about $62. Actually, I also had a 100% winning percentage, which even Lawrence says is pretty much unheard of. Go me! I kind of looked over my trades but didn't review them though. Basically the takeaway is the following:

• Hold my good scalping trades a little bit longer
• Once you have a good stop loss, don't cancel it. It'll often save you a lot of money more than you're trying to make

Something else from the email conversation I had with Lawrence:

• Wait until there's a new low for the candle, watch it establish a base or support level and then long. If it breaks that low get out pronto
• Be careful about chasing stocks that keeps going higher or lower--hard to play and whips up and down erratically
• Focus on minimize losses
• Try not to trade stocks that trade in less than $1 range for the whole day and stocks that don't have > 1,000 share on every level of the open book. The profit margin on those is so small it's not worth it.
• Be careful not to press when something's not there
• Keep calling trades out and asking questions

Today... eh, different story. Ended the day down about $100, which really, I could've saved myself $60 if I had done damage control better. Hit my first scalp trade and it went against me but I didn't cover so a $20 loss went to $40, $60, and finally $80 in just a little bit over the minute. Another trade too, is where I did chase it a little bit and it swiped down and lost another $40 in just another short minute. What makes me mad the most is that I get out near the bottom and both of them bounced back to a point where I could make a profit. I think I still did the right thing, getting out, it's just that in the future I need to get out faster. If I can't hit my outs at 5 or 7 cents I need to get out no more than 20... probably just market out to the specialist ASAP.

I did make a good trade towards the close when futures keep ticking down after the minutes of the FOMC meeting couple of weeks ago. It was near the whole dollar and I shorted it and Lawrence actually said that he might go long on it instead. I might have to go over that with him again but judging by the futures and the open book I did think it was going to go down for a nice little profit. I turned out to be right this time but still.... need to do more thinking on that one I guess.