In and out

4:33 am (Hawaii) Out of FAZ at 68.53, decent profit. It was up to 71.68, but no question about it ... the France banking discussion on CNBC helped FAZ sell off from that high. Went from 70 to 68.50 in 3 minutes. Simon what's-his-name insisting that SocGen has no connection to US banks. David Faber mentioned in premarket that US banks should not sink just because Euro banks go down ... but that's strange because it's all tied in whether the knots are obvious to see or not. Banks lend to each other, "money" (fractal banking dollars) crosses the pond ... oh well. I had a positive trade for a change, no complaints here.

Didn't want to get out of FAZ with the stochastics in oversold territory, but protecting the profit was necessary in this weirdass momo market. MACD is still in decline. I may re-enter once that gets positive. I'd love to hold a core of FAZ all the way up to 100, but it's not worth the risk. I can't beat the warp-speed computers.

Bathroom buy

First Commandment of Trading

Break the rules. The rules break you.

All day I enjoy watching charts and indicators on a bunch of stocks, ETFs ... then I finally have to use the bathroom and take the laptop with me. No charts, which are on my main screen on the desk. There, in the bathroom, I decide to buy FAZ at 12.61, near its high of the day, and hit the buy button.

FAZ drops slowly to 12.51 and I get out with a tiny loss. Back at the desk, I realize that 12.61 was near the top of its stochastics (1-minute chart). MACD wasn't looking that good at the time, too.

Of course, once I sold, FAZ ran to 12.65. The two minutes I'm away from my live charts, I make a poorly planned buy and pay the price. FAZ closed at 12.67 and went to 12.72 in afterhours trading. The chart would've told me to wait for the right levels via indicators and I might have bought at 12.51 or 12.52 instead of 12.61.

Small position. Tiny loss. The trade was stupid. The lesson is good.

Back to 100% cash.