My Renew Sense of Purpose

Pretty decent week of trading so far. Let's finish Friday strong into the week. Good trades on Monday with HES and PBR. PBR was shooting up as rumor/news of them finding the biggest reserve in the world and all the other oil/gas/energy guys are going up as well. But then news came out, supposedly that they didn't and it sold off quick. Both were for about 2 points profit. For slow days like we have had, that's really good. Tuesday, gave back about half of my gains on V and WM (after hour)... it wasn't that bad, it was just that I were in 500 shares so the loss were pretty big. Wednesday I was chasing USO after the oil numbers came out and my stop didn't trigger for some reason and I think was in 1,000 shares that time. Today got some sweet prints repeatedly... should've taken 1,000 instead of 500, but I did lose quite a bit on STP when SPWR earnings and conference call came out. I should've waited for the bounces to get short instead of chasing it...

I started bringing my laptop to work and hook onto our wireless internet so I can bring Briefing and Trade The News up and not take up space on my own monitor. It's cool too b/c now I can listen to Rhapsody or podcast on iTune in the middle of the day when it's slow.

Honestly, I was pretty frustrated last weekend but I started reading some of the blogs I've added to my Google Reader and finished Stock Market Wizards and got some ideas to watch this week. I started doing a spreadsheet of earnings just to observe the price change and try to get ideas in the future. I also started watching stocks that gapped up or down in the morning, wait to see what kind of range they establish the first 30 minute to an hour and then either trade the break out or buying/shorting in between the range. The tricky thing is how to define the break out/down, i.e. if it's near the low of the range, do you buy thinking it's the floor and how much room do you give it and vice versa? I've also been trying to trade along the trend more, not just SPY or EEM but other stocks as well.

After watching earnings play for a couple of days, I think if there's a big name coming out w/ report, I need to not just be on top of that stock, but also companies in related industry and the sector's ETF if there is one b/c they tend to move together.

On a more personal level... I've been having trouble sleeping again, maybe it's b/c all these trading ideas floating around in my head but b/c of that I've been going to bed late and sleeping through my alarm and getting to the office late. I need to stop this before it becomes a habit...

After some of the good earnings reported by INTC, GOOG and IBM, feels like a rally mode. Although volume has been lower than usual, right now I think we're going to test that resistance level after two failed attempts. The market in general is making like an ascending triangle move w/ higher lows. Once SPY gets back in the 139 level things will get very interesting. Will be break out to the up or reverse? Either way I think a lot of people are just waiting that's why the volume is low and we might get an explosive move soon.