The adventures of butterboy the rookie daytrader

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butterboy — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 03:43:44 +0000

I really should try posting more often. Right now i’m in medellin, colombia aka. heaven on earth. I would recommend every man come here at least once in their lifetime. My account is up to 1763. 1200 more to go to 3000.

No trades, no posts

butterboy — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 21:34:58 +0000

I didn’t get in any trades yesterday or today. I guess I’ll have to wait till next week to make some money. It’s hard to not be able to trade but I’ve learned that sometimes, it’s just better that way. I’d rthar not trade than get chopped up anyhow. Even though I only had one positive day more than covered both negative days so I added money to my account which is always a good thing. I’ll be trading remote for a few weeks. It will be the first time I’m trading from out of the office so I know Murphy’s Law will come into effect and try to slow me down. Hopefully I won’t lose too much when it rears its ugly head. Hope everyone has a good weekend. Go METS!!!

Title

butterboy — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 22:14:02 +0000

I’ve run out of titles. I didn’t even want to post since I’m watching the Mets game but I figured I should break the habit of delaying my posts on my losing days. I went short on WCI and CTV. I went long on IMCL. WCI got me stopped out for a .27 cent loss.

Here is CTV

CTV

I went short on the break of the 12:00 bar. I figured the stock had gone as low as it can go, but then again I’ve never been a good bottom picker (unless it’s a losing trade).

Here’s my winner for lack of a better word.

IMCL

I went long on the break of the 12:15 bar. It made a fake attempt to go up at around three but then it fizzled. Good enough to cover the loss on WCI.

With 300 shares, my loss for the day was $112.2 /1.78 Zs. That’s how it is sometimes.

New highs!!

butterboy — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 21:13:30 +0000

Personally, I could care less. My broker friend asked me today if I made money(which after the 72nd time, get’s annoying and I usually just answer no to). I was amazed at his ability to know without me even saying anything, but before giving him credit I asked, “why would you say that?”. “The market was up today, made new highs”.

Well funny because those new highs did nothing to help out my one long today

I got long twice. Once offof the 11:30 bar and again after the 12:15 bar. I didn’t expect much a move up but I figured that even though I got stopped out once it was forming a base at that level. Boy was I ever wrong.

Luckily the new market highs didn’t have an adverse effect on my best short

DGX

I got short at 53.40 on the break of the 11:45 bar. Held it to the close. So with 200 shares and after fees I ended up $594/14.14 Zs. Tomorrow I’ll be trading 300 shares. Hope you all had a good day.

Another Post

butterboy — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 21:30:46 +0000

I stepped it up to 300 shares today and did three trades. Unfortunately none of them worked out so I ended up with a $260/4.12 Z loss. Here is another reason why I don’t attempt to make predictions about the market.

HET. This is usually where I post the chart but flicker isn’t working so use your imagination or your own charting software for 10/2/2006. Anyhow, this stock reportedly received an offer for about $81 per share. Now I know that stocks don’t go up to the price of the buyout even if it’s confirmed since it takes time for the actual thing to go through. Of course when I saw the stock retrace to 75.60, and allow me to go long on 76.00 I was picturing a good day. Even if it just went up to 77 it would have been good. Of course, I got stopped out because logically, the stock made it’s only moves during the first 45 minutes of the day.

I got stopped out of GILD, which eventually went down but not much. The only candidate that would have worked out for me today would have been GIGM, but I couldn’t short any shares. That’s the way it is sometimes. Tomorrow I’ll trade with 200 share and see what the market brings.

Sweet

butterboy — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 14:51:37 +0000

Yesterday I decided to increase my share size to 200. I know it’s not the prudent thing to do, but I figure what the hell. If I get a good run I”ll get to 3k quicker. Luckily for me the trading gods were in my favor. My first trade was ACN, which got me stopped out right away. No biggie, just a 17 dollar loss. My next trade was ENER.

ENER

I got long on the break of the ninth bar risking 38 cents. I figured it would be a losing day, as it usually is when I double up, so I went home satisfied that my loss wouldn’t be as big. When I checked out the stock at around 2, it felt good to see it up almost a dollar. When I looked again at four it felt great. I managed to make 440 on the trade, which was by far my best trade yet. Now my account equity is back up to 800.

I also shorted NVTL which managed to barely make enough to nullify the loss I had with ACN. All in all the week has been good to me. We’ll see how Friday turns out.

When God gives you lemons

butterboy — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 21:56:05 +0000

Today I fortunately didn’t have the probems that I had yesterday. Everything went smooth and as such I got involved with SEPR. It wasn’t the prettiest chart, and frankly, I expected to get stopped out. Just goes to show, that I don’t know a damn thing about the market.

SEPR

I got long on the break of the 11:15-11:30 bar. Got filled at 47.88. The stock was choppy for a while and then went as high as the previous high of 49.20, only to come back down. It wasn’t pretty, but was a much needed $70 dollar profit.

On another note I’ve been looking at Uglychart’s dummy a day posting. The key as always is finding those moves on time. I find that sometimes a good way of finding setups is simply waiting till midday and looking for stocks that have the best moves percentage wise. Here are stocks that I found that had made big percentage moves midday.

FDRY

If you had used the 15 min chart, stopped trading at 12:30, and closed your positions on the end of the day you would have made money. Don’t know how often this works, but it’s worth a try, especially for someone that’s just starting out. I’ve been keeping an eye that and the results have been pretty positive over these past three days. The worse day was today with 2 points per share traded. Just something to think about.

Opportunity Lost

butterboy — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 13:48:25 +0000

Yesterday was a horrible day. Not because I lost a lot of money. Simply because I lost a great opportunity to make money. The worse part is that it was out of my control at the moment. My browser at work wasn’t loading certain sites. One of them happened to be www.prophet.net, where I scan for my stocks for the day. Well, of course the day something like that happens is the day you miss great opportunities. Yesterday my candidates were EYE and CECO.

EYE

Look at that beautiful shorting opportunity at 40.43. Even if I did get filled ten to fifteen cents away, that could have easily been 1.60 in my pocket.

I seem to be less enthusiastic to post whenever days like this and losing days happen. I guess it’s because I’m still negative overall. That’s a situation I’m looking to address by stepping up my size sooner. I know it doesn’t make any sense but at this point I don’t care. I’m tired of getting excited over having a $144 dollar day. Right now my account is at $292. Let’s see how soon I can get it to $3000.

Watching paint dry

butterboy — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 21:13:08 +0000

That’s what I’ve been doing since Thursday. No trades on Friday, and even though Altria was enticing, I didn’t get involved with that stock either. Good thing I didn’t because I probably would have gotten stopped out only to see it tank in the last hour. One trade I did take last week where I got sotpped out but got in again to get some profits was WAG

WAG

I got short on the break of the 6th bar, only to get stopped out by one cent. I got short again on the break of the bar that stopped me out. Net, it only gave me about 36 dollars.

My account has taken strong hits these last few weeks so I think my trading will be a bit less. If I had traded the way I normally do I would have gotten stopped a few times on CCJ today. I expect things to get good because when things are going bad, the good times are just around the corner.

And I thought August was bad

butterboy — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 21:55:44 +0000

The title says everything. Right now I am longing for the choppy weeks of August. This month has been miserable for me. Between today and yesterday I managed to lose another $114. This is almost reminding me of the days I would spend weeks without a winning trade. I expected by this point to be able to increase my size to 200 shares. I’m pretty much back where I started last month. This sucks. My losers were KMX, twice and CC, both longs on a positive day. Go figure. I also got stopped out on the GBP/USD short, but that was my fault because I got in right before the Fed announcement. I”ll probably be shorting it again though. Tomorrow hopefully will be a better day.