My New Streak?

Trading back at the old desk today since David comes in on Mondays. Frankly, I just feel more relaxed and focused. Relax and focus seem to contradict each other but that's how it is. I'm focused on looking for new trades and I'm relaxed just trying to maximize my profits. I had a pretty nice day, and almost made a new personal daily best.

Banking is still weak, now that FRE and FNM comes out with this FAS 140 news I don't think it's going to get any better. IMB dropped 29% after market (well, it's like 70 cents and it dropped 20 cents so the percentage looks more drammatic). In my long term I've dumped all my longs... don't know if that's smart or not but I'm not going to get long until I find where the money is flowing. I'm short a lot of car makers, airlines, regional banks like ZION, MTB, STI, BBT and all the exchanges like CME, NMX, ICE, and NYX.

My KRE and STI short worked well around the open but it could've been better. This might be one of the places where I should use the wider stop once it's in my favor like Andy said, especially if something is trending very well. I think KRE dropped another point since I got out. I was looking for SPY to break that 126 support today and it happened right around lunch time. I'm glad I was zoned in and decided to skip lunch and shorted bunch of EEM and shorted the bounce with that and EWZ again. I think the plan tomorrow is to see what the market does around this 126 level if it gets back there.

I caught Andy for a few minutes today while he's walking around the office and asked him about Hirschhorn and he said to look for sample journals from him and what I found was the following 15 points, although in certain sites or interviews I've read it's 18... oh well.

1. Establish your trading rules for the day. For example, if you've been struggling lately, you might establish a rule that you'll take 50% off your winners on the first hint of a pullback.

2. Identify the major world events that are currently in play.

3. Figure out which economic numbers are in play today.

4. Create a motto for the day. Keep it brief and positive.

5. Develop your morning game plan (be sure to do so before the open).

6. Evaluate your morning game plan (how did things really play out? How did you react? Did you stick to or stray from your game plan, and why?)

7. Prepare an afternoon game plan (create it over lunch, say, before the afternoon session begins).

8. Evaluate your afternoon game plan. A quick retooling of strategy could pay off in the second half.

9. Ask yourself: What did I do well today? What could I have done better? Use this step to dig deep and engage in some genuinely tough self-analysis.

10. List all your trades that appear to be working and all those that aren't.

11. Call the market -- is it range-bound? Trending? Which sectors are in play?

12. Determine for yourself: On a scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high), your level of focus and concentration for the day.

13. Your daily question: Am I a better trader today than I was yesterday? If so, why? In other words, what exactly have I learned? A day without learning is a wasted day in a trader's career.

14. Which trades should I pay attention to tomorrow?

15. My goal for tomorrow is?