My Frustration

January hasn't been that well so far trading wise. I've been taking bigger size which has worked out sometimes but occasionally I'll get hit for a loss on these big size and I guess I'd loose my head. Also, with bigger size I've pushed the price against myself sometimes when I need to get out. It definitely requires a little bit of fine tuning. Plus with the bigger size I'm not holding my winners as well. It might also be that they're not that good of a set up to begin with so I'm not getting much upside getting into a trade. This is all the same back when I was still a rookie, increasing share size say from 100 to 200, 200 to 400, and 400 to 800. From now on, take only a little bit more than I normally would for typical trades, maybe scale slightly. On the setups that I really like and if it's thick like a big cap or ETF where I wouldn't have too much problem getting out, go ahead and take couple thousand shares.

January is far from over though. I've got time to make up some ground. Obama takes office on the 20th and the 25th is Chinese New Year. We should begin to see some real actions then. I need to just forget about the past trading days, especially the bad ones and just focus on each day and break them down into each little segmenets. I think I should be just fine if I can do that for the rest of this month.

I started reading Liar's Poker. I don't know if it counts as a fiction because it is about Wall Street and banking back in the 80's and the author's account of his tenure there. So far I'm loving it. I finally found the lamp for my bed stand that I couldn't locate after the move so I've just reading a little bit of it each night before I go to sleep. I love the language Michael Lewis uses. It's casual, funny, yet it paints a vivid picture. There's a part where he talks about the traders in the firm that make a lot of money and the refer to them as Big Swinging Dicks (yeah, excuse the language but I'm just quoting the book) and he links them to elephant trunks. He calls the female version Big Swinging Dickettes. It might just be a guy think but I think that's hilarious. This books has the whole Boiler Room feel to it and I love Boiler Room. It's one of the few movies I actually own. Normally I don't buy DVDs and I don't watch movies twice. I only buy the DVD if I truly love the movie, that it speaks something about me or I just can't get sick of it. If they were playing one of the movies I own all day on a channel, I swear I wouldn't mind watching it over and over again for that entire day and quote all the lines in that movie.

***Oh, and I would love to become one of the BSD's at work. That would be lovely

It's been a relatively warm winter for me and I went out to run today. I don't like to run. It used to be that I would run only if the bus was about to leave the stop and I need to get on or that somebody is chasing me with a weapon. From time to time I would go for a jog around Town Lake (or Lady Bird Johnson Lake now... that name's too long). I went today and brought my Garmin Forerunner 305 with me. It tracks my lap time and my route along with other stuff. I haven't played with it that much yet but I believe you can also import your data onto your computer. My time wasn't too shabby. I did three miles and it was actually 10 minute less than the best time I can remember back in college (or I just remembered wrong). I know I could do better too b/c I slacked off and walked a lot of it even know I wasn't feeling that out of breath. I don't really have the endurance yet but hopefully I get someone to go w/ me next time and push me to go farther without stopping.

I'm also going to go shop for a bike this weekend. I've decided on a road bike. Maybe I'll get a mountain bike later if I feel it's necessary. I don't know what kind of shape I'm in really for climbing hills but it'd be cool if I can leave my house and then go down 360, head west on Bee Caves Road, up 620 and then back down 2222 to my house, or the reverse but I don't think I'd like to go up that big ass hill on 2222.