Up and Running

I finally got my brokerage account (Think or Swim) funded last week. I have been in the simulator for the past 1.5 months learning the software and more importantly learning how to screen for picks and learn applicable patterns of my strategy (PennyStocking, see http://www.timothysykes.com/).

Thursday rolled around and I did my first dumb thing as a trader right out of the gates- I went outside my strategy and made some dumb play on Washington Mutual (WM) thinking that it had a chance to rebound on a buyout from a supposed private equity firm and the bailout supposed to be signed that morning- both were fucking jokes. So I was down pretty big in 3 minutes and left the position within 5 minutes. It was a stupid trade and I wasted one of my three day trades allowed under the NYSE day trading rules.

It felt like a punch in the stomach- going outside my strategy after being in a simulator for 1.5 months. Lesson learned. I made some of my money back by shorting Apex Silver Mines (SIL). It is apparently some silver mine in Bolivia that was up astronomically due to I believe the Bolivian government allowing redistribution to shareholders or something. The point is, it isn't a good company and was up on speculations. A lot of people subscrbing to the PennyStocking strategy via TIMAlerts got in on this play and rode the wave down banking on profits. Since my account was opened only recently, I could only catch the very tail end of this action but still made some money to recover from my WAMU trade. There was some downside left to take profits, but mentally I just wanted to try to regain some of my loss. Here is the trade:

Another stock under the rader that came from my alerts was Questcor Pharmasuticals (QCOR), The pattern showed strong strength and expected it to rise fast. Instead, it has been a pretty slow trade. I just got out of the position today, using a stop loss that I needed to put in as I was commuting back from a lunch break. The stock reached its 52 week high today at $6.65ish and then started dropping. It had trouble breaking the $6.25 resistance level on 9/30 (finally did at the end of the day) and then trouble breaking through $6.50 today. Here is my trade:

I was a huge pussy and sold around $6.8 when I purchased at $7.0 the day before. I still had that sick feeling about my trade with Washington Mutual and was trying to protect against downside. I could have prevented that loss realizing the chart pattern was strong and to realize there was some support at that level if I went back enough. After the small loss, I decided to get back in at 2 differnt positions, one at $6.94 and the other at $7.0 again. I was pretty happy that I got in at $7 again because the stock made the same pattern, dropping after making SLOW gains and I noticed the opportunity to get in. However, this has been a SLOW ride and with my day trades bumping back to 3 I need the liquidity in my account to jump on any opportunities that may come along.