AJ

I don't think I've ever felt so bad about a trade as I have about the DRYS positions that I got out of a couple of days ago. It's not that I lost money on it, but because I cut my profits on this big time. Nearly 2.5K worth. Wow, when I put a K in front of it, it looks even bigger. I got shaken out of both my positions a couple of days ago. Sure, you must respect your stop-loss, but I should have gotten out of only 1 position, and kept hold of one. I tried to protect about 250 bucks in profit, but that cost me a lot more. Granted, this stock could have gone down, instead of up, but it doesn't make me feel any better.

On a possibly unrelated note, but mainly because I was so pissed off, I realized that I'm trying to monitor too many stocks. Yesterday, when I was adding some stock alerts in my Ameritrade account, I got a message saying that I couldn't add more as I reached my limit of 80 alerts. 80 alerts ?? What the duce, am I nuts???
I need to concentrate on a few strong stocks, get to know them, know their support, resistance areas and trade accordingly. I've been mainly concentrating on break-outs, but buying on pullbacks could be rewarding as well.
As an example, Madstocks.com (Thanks Ragin') had a post in which he showed some nice charts, and as a quiz, asked people which chart they thought was the best. I posted 'CMI' as my answer. But what did I do with it after that? Not a whole lot, I think I got an alert when it crossed 140 today, but had I studied and monitored the chart properly, I could have made some money on it.



So, a few changes for me going ahead...
1. Choose fundamentally strong, trending stocks. I think I could start from the IBD CANSLIM list. Study the various supports and resistance areas.
2. The watchlist should contain only a handful of stocks. Most traders have a few favorite stocks. I need to find my own favorites.

Trading isn't easy. But if you keep it simple, it should make it a little easier.

If you've made it till here, thanks for listening. Trade sensibly.