Today's trading and some extra stuff.

I traded this morning between 1000h and 1100h, three trades. I was dead wrong on the first one (impatience to get in as I had set and cancelled three trades already...seems to be a common thread here, first trade losses). I lost $0.14 per share on a short sell but by getting out as soon as the trade started doing something I didn't expect and, although my loss was small even that could have been avoided.

So I spent the rest of the time more conservatively and placed two more trades long for $0.59, ($0.31 and $0.28) per share profits...had I played the same two trades more aggressively (or perhaps without interruptions) they would have been one trade and the take would have been $0.79. Worth noting that had I held the first bad trade these figures would have been losses not gains as the price ended up going up rather than down.

The morning was pretty flat anyway and there was not much profit to be had without really working a number of very small trades...I stop at four trades but called it a day at three today. Worst day of the last week and a half...all 100 share trades so my net today was $15...wow...but that is still a 0.3% return for the portfolio. That puts me at 15.02% since last Monday or $760 based on my $5,000 capital.

I never looked at the final chart, and won't right now but I would bet it was a slim day or even a small down day...I'll look tomorrow morning out of curiousity.

Worth noting that for AEM at the open it gapped overnight up $2.50 then jumped another $1.40 in the few couple of minutes. While it would have been nice to have been long overnight it is not in my current plan to try to read the overnight gaps.

There was a nice short trade right there to catch the reaction to the opening impulse as it dropped back to the opening area again but it was a three minute window from open to drop if I remember correctly, quick anyway. I chose to wait the first while out though as the peak did not correspond with any indicator I was using and it was too soon. What did happen is the stock price ended up wallowing around for almost the first 30 minutes while the TSX caught up...once it was caught up the prices corresponded nicely and all my indicators were in line...even so I jumped the first trade thinking everything was already in synch...wrong-O.

Two other comments:

I am finding that gaps are less likely to "fade" of late. Certainly not enough to try to trade for a fade or even a continuation. No real predictability here at all.

Waiting for the first 30 minutes before trading (20- 30 anyway) allows the moving averages and averages based indicators to get in line. I use a 10SMA, Bollinger Band of 20,2 and a 30SMA so if the price gaps much more than a few cents it can take as long as the period of the averages to get the indicator to mean anything relavant. I won't wait for the 30 necessarily and the smaller the gap the quicker these become useful...in fact I was considering keeping four stocks in my daily hit list and only trading the one that had the smallest gap so I could capture more of the morning in trading...letting it ride those few extra minutes seems to get a more consistant result though as my first trades are not so hot lately. That and I am specifically trading one stock to let familiarity work for me.

JD.