ZSG Trading Blog

I’ve been a little hesitant this week about making trades mainly because of the Earning and Fed Reserve board is going to meet. If I were profitable in my trades right now, I would get out of them ahead of everything.

I put some more money in my account so that I would have some buying power as my April has been Horrible with a capital “Terrible”. In March, I was enjoying having profit on my side, now I have to rebuild what I lost. I learned some lessons and am finding myself catching them setting myself up to make the same ones… Ugh.

I bought 10 shares of RIMM. I know big purchase. But one of the things that I didn’t do this past month was Manage my risk. So, I am bullish on RIMM and want to own it. I would rather have the options, but I don’t want it to turn against me, thus, I risk less (and gain less) with the stock at this point. If I could find a $20 or so stock that I could sell covered calls, I would do that.

So, maybe it’s time to look.

I had a bad April, so far. I’ve lost 2/3rds of my account, but I have not given up. I have concede that part of the problem was that I had high levels of anxiety with other things in my life and that made me make some bad decisions. But now I am moving on.

So where am I now?

I’m not as extended as I once was, of course, part of this is because I have less in my account to work with. This is forcing me to make smarter decisions, okay, they may not be smarter, but they are there.

Right now, I am in

AMZN (call), BIDU (OTM put), LVS (Bear Call Spread), WM (call), XL (put), Zion (put), AFL (Call)

Thursday was not kind to me. AMZN didn’t have a good showing after earnings and dropped 3+ points. BIDU is still strong (this was only incase it nosed dived, the put was only $40), LVS has been showing one-day strength and the retreating. WM is coiling up… I am managing my Exit strategy daily on this one. XL and Zion has had some strong days this past week… if financials are at a bottom, then these are losing propositions.

I’m only down to being able to trade $100 right now because that’s all that is in my account. I need to have some position be profitable to free up some cash. There are some good and predictable action going on right now but I am missing it.

Options Expire tomorrow and this round of Options (both calls and puts) have hammered me into oblivion. I had somewhat of a decent account level (relative). However, a couple of my picks earlier this month worked against me and I did NOTHING to stop it. Why? I thought that “it would turn around” and “it HAS to retrace”. Nope. Now a couple THOUSAND dollars poorer, I am sitting here rubbing my last dollars together.

The plan? Learn from my mistakes.

The first problem is that I didn’t put ENOUGH credence into my own research. I kinda took some experts opinion, looked at the chart and said… “Yeah, that looks good enough” and BOOM. I was in…

Which brings me not Not Diversified  enough. Seems that I was trying to Short some financial and the Solar Stocks at a time when neither WANTED to be shorted. Oi! The big problem with the financials is that the two positions (LEH and MER) both moved together… so neither one of them did well. Actually, LEH did make some money but MER was a complete loss.

Then there was FSLR. Yeah… It’ll stop at 200. WRONG! It’s hanging out at 300 now. Complete Loss. Although I did make some money during the climb, I held onto the put because… I was stupid too.. Actually, it was a lack of Trading Plan for this position. No plan going in, No plan going out. Loss.

Now, I am keeping my portfolio alive with some Spreads right now. 2 expire on Friday for modest gains EBAY and SPY. Both are safe at this point. SPY has about a $1 worth of room and EBAY has about $1.50. Looks like the GOOG had good earning since it’s up 65 points shortly after hours.

I’ve had this up and running for a while, but no entry… shame on me.

Right now, my trading is stinking. I’ve been hanging on to a few trades that went TOTALLY south on me (FSLR and MER). Both went in the opposite directions and I took the whole loss instead of getting out of them. Problem: No Trading Plan for these positions.

Also right now, I have a 2 positions (BIDU and RIMM) that are near an exit point. But then again, they could move in the direction that I forecast and I could make out okay. Worst thing is that BIDU was up +$200 and I never set the Stop Loss and now it’s -$1,100. Yeah, that hurts. Tomorrow should tell me if I am getting in or out. And if I do get out, it should indicate a reversal (Bull Flag) of the current trend and I can move on the other side and make money there.

Right now, my ONLY trade that is making me money is 2 puts on ZION. It’s looking like it’s going to hit a bottom in a while and I am up around 20% or so. This is one of my Zombie trades. I am anticipating, having a trailing stop on this and letting it make money and when I get stopped out, fine.

THe worst thing right now is that I am strapped for Capital. I have my money tied up in positions that are on the turning point. Problem: No Overall Trading Plan

I am in my second Credit Spread (Bear Call Spread) with EBAY. I need it to stay below $32.50 by Friday for a 28% gain. Should be easy to do given that $31.50 is a good S/R level and that people aren’t spending as much on stuff. Especially crap on eBay, although I am currently selling my crap on Ebay.

Tasks: Reveiw my current positions to make sure that i know my Entry/Exit points. I need to also look over the weekend material to create a Weekly WatchList of stuff this week.

I did take a loss on DBA of around 21% since it was up today and it expires on Friday, it’s not a big mover, so I didn’t want to lose anymore than I have done to this point.

Welcome to my trading blog. This blog is intended as an online trading journal of my, uh, trading. I’m not exactly such to what capacity I will use it for, but the notebook that I have is too cluttered. This will allow me to have a historical account of the bonehead and awesome trades that I make.

So, the first couple posts will be just of background information about me and then I will get more into my trading. Any information that you receive from this blog could be hazardous to your account balance, but I will try to have intelligent and lucid comments on here.

please feel free to comment on here. I appreciate both positive and negative comments about my content. It helps me grow. And if you think you will hurt my feelings, I have Asperger’s Syndrome and don’t often emote. Spammer who leave comments… I have my spam blocker and you can go to hell.

So welcome to the Opening Bell… we’re ready to Trade!