A-Train Finance

Trading Challenge: Down $818 to $8107.00.

Geez, do I hate it when I have to use the red font for my trading updates. It was a difficult week for me in the markets as I practically gave back all of the above-even gains from last week. It has now been a little over a month and a half, the challenge is more than half over. At this point, I have approximately 5 weeks to generate a roughly 98% return-wow. Although my account hasn’t grown significantly since the beginning of the challenge, my understanding of trading has. It has been quite a learning experience and I can’t wait to continue the curve from here. I’ve updated my rules a bit and here are some of the new ones:

1. Nothing goes straight up continually - always take your profits.
-There is really no way to know that a stock will stay above a certain price at any time. Take your profits when you can, you’ll always be ahead of everyone else if you do, especially in a down market.
2. Never enter an order to be filled at market open.
-You have no idea what will happen in the first 1/2 hour of volatility. Let the stock establish it’s personality before you enter a trade.
3. Don’t short until the stock is over-bought.
An ugly $450 loss this week taught me this lesson. Shorting into what looked like weakness, only soon enough for a clip to come out announcing good news for the stock. Although it did come back to below my profit mark, I had already cut losses. Don’t fight the trend. It’s an uphill battle.

That’s all for now… until later.