300? Oh no, 400!!!

So I haven't really been updating about my trading for a while mostly because I haven't found anything meaningful to write about. I've been just plugging away and I found myself having another up week last week and I'm starting off this week pretty good, too up about $40 today. I'm feeling slightly in a zone so I'd have to make my reads and trade very carefully and ideally I'll have another up week so I can trade 400 shares!

Caught a really good trade in CTX today. The market was down and I noticed the homebuilders were up. I felt like someone was trying to pick bottoms again like Bear Searns always try to do. I see that it level off on a top and started to go down. Seeing the bids are getting hit hard, meaning people are shorting it, I took 100 shares @ 25.70 and it soon started dropping and I can see people cancelling their bids so I know it'll have quite a bit to run. When the activities died down I got out @ 25.27 although I kind of chumpped it. I tried later with LEN and TOL... TOL didn't work out but I got out with limited damage and LEN was a good winner. I was seeing all the home builders starting to make new highs and I wanted to shorted it so it didn't work out. Later on in the afternoon they started to dip and LEN was the only one that hasn't made the move yet and that's why I shorted it.

KHD... there was news on CNBC about it. The company makes cement and I personally felt that it made a nice run and it was time to reverse. I got in near the whole dollar... the first time I got in I didn't follow my rules. As soon as it broke, I knew that my outs were limited b/c the liquidity was low for a stock that trades about 160,000 shares a day and I got burned in the end. I was playing that big spread a little bit. I would throw my order out below the level 1 offer and if I get hit I'd turn around and throw out a bid to try to get hit there as well or just wait for it to come down itself. It worked couple of time but overall I still lost money on that stock.