Reorganization

Update 2:58 pm (Hawaii) Net-net, I was up for the week, but what was a solid week on just one trade (Monday) turned into a mediocre week because of four poorly executed trades today. What needs to be corrected is both the overdoing of ongoing trades, as well as the lack of adherence to discipline. Especially when trading an ultra bull (or bear) ETF like AGQ. It could certainly go another 20 or 40 bucks on Monday, or sink just as many dollars. But I viewed today's trades strictly as daytrade material, yet I did not treat them as such.

There needs to be a clean time frame for daytrades. I can sense the clock ticking in my head when a stock levels out after a big intraday gain ... so one of my new indicators will have to be done manually: a time span or "life of trade" running note. If AGQ spends just 6 minutes, on average today, to move up another leg, then what happens when it goes 6, 12, 18 minutes without moving up or down significantly? Obviously, it has probably stalled out and profit-takers are starting to take control. That's precisely what happened in all four of my trades today. So this is correctible, no question.

That being said, EXK was a great buy at 9.25, which is where I told myself to buy early in the day. Instead, I rushed in at 9.73 and wound up with a small loss. EXK closed at 9.30. I wouldn't doubt that it goes to 11 on Monday as the PM bounce continues. Comex/JP Morgan/Fed could announce another margin requirement hike and shoot PMs back down, of course. But EXK is nice at 9.30, and XG is, too, at 9.38.

Things will get better with more familiarity. I've been used to SLV and AAPL as trades, primarily, and they hadn't moved as wildly as ZSL and AGQ and EXK did today. At one point, AGQ moved almost perfectly between 196 and 198 for an hour or so. Great for scalpers, which I am not, but probably should consider as another weapon of profit.

I'd love to hold XG and EXK long term, and looking back, I was 1. too emotionally drained from the four trades, win or lose, to focus on the end of the day, 2. too tired from lack of sleep, and 3. far too arrogant.

Arrogance, more than anything, cost me a (small) winning day and tattooed me with the worst one-day loss I've had in ages. Could've been much worse, but shouldn't have been there to start with. I need to start doing something I stopped doing a year ago: measure by ratio of potential profit versus potential loss. It should be 2:1 or 3:1, not 1:5!