Trading Recap 2/8/16

Another slight loss today although I ended up topticking my stop by not giving it enough space and the trade would have worked nicely. No big deal, something to keep in mind. I realize that this is all for practice and that it is a good way of getting out any bad habits. I hope I am not making bad habits but I don't think that is the case. Idea generation is still solid. Execution needs to be improved upon. But for now, a $20 loss doesn't really matter. I am being more selective and sticking to my thesis requirements for trades I take. So far so good, even with the recent small string of losses. My emotional control is slowly getting better before and after the trade. I don't get emotional if I have a win or loss like I used to. I am much more neutral. I have to work on my emotions within the trade, but those are getting better. Reminders like today are needed though, but the goal is to need them less and less until you barely need them at all.

Oh and last week I didn't post anything because I was sick early in the week and didn't trade and then didn't find anything I liked for Wednesday or Friday. Some ideas would have worked but I wasn't confident in the ideas.

White arrow is entry followed by exit.

LNKD: I was still short biased on this and when Citron came out with his long recommendation, I looked for any failure of trend to get short thinking that a lot of people bought this on his recommendation and that any weakness, especially given the market we are in, would cause people to panic sell. When it started peaking at 111.50s I got short with risk to that over/under. I should have known better and given it more range, given the volatility. I stopped out when it looked to be going past 112 and top ticked it. Stupid. However, it came back down and looked to hold the 111.50 level so if I hadn't stopped out before, I probably would have here since it looked like it dipped, held, and was going to go higher. But it didn't and instead it did what I thought it would do. This is why it's so important to do what lots of the pros say and start in small and then add on confirmation and tighten risk. (Cue it's hard to do on my account, blah blah) I had 20 shares and maybe I could have done 10 and 10 but (cue commission talk) at the end of the day $20 loss is no big deal in absolute terms. I have to remember from now to just let things trade out and even if I take a "hit" of $40/50 that is nothing and only feels like something due to the small account size. The real stop should have been 112.50 over/under. Add after it tried to break out and failed and retested resistance. Also, I don't know how much the market helped push this lower but the next day it went down 9% while the market bounced.

UBNT: I had this on watch due to it having a large gap up then being sold off for the rest of the day. I wanted to see any failed follow through for a short. Instead there was a nice pop and then a stuff which I saw but didn't act on. It came back to HODs and once it peaked again at the prior resistance, it faded the rest of the day for the most part. Mostly putting this here for remembering the setup.

MRO: I had this on watch for a short. With CHK and others going down I thought this would fall as well. It fell at the open and then consolidated near the lows. While everything else was getting slammed, this was holding up. This gave me pause in my short idea because it looked to have relative strength in the sector. However, it tried to break out of its consolidation and got slammed back down. To me, it became a 50/50 trade and wasn't worth it, although my original idea as correct for a bit. It didn't fade that much and it ended up coming back to make new highs before coming all the way back down again.

Things to work on:

1. Improve emotional control within trade - let the trade pan out either way. Worst thing that happens is you lose some money but as long as you stick to your plan then you'll be fine.