January 12th...I knew I could do it.

I am still waiting for my account linking to take place so I decided to do some fake trading. All of the historical days I have been doing of late all look sunshine and rosey, as hindsight studies should. So I thought I would put some of my theories to the next test.

The almost real fake trade.

What I managed to do was to show a miserable loss while faking. This was a very crappy day to be trading though, so I think I will blame that, primarily, and the fact that I did not recognise it until after 5 trades is the secondary issue. At least I was faking.

No need for better resolution on this chart. The price opened well below the S1, headed for S2 and just plain wallowed in misery right up to noon. The entire range from open has been less than 30 cents. I will not go on about these trades as the green S2 was the trigger for entries and the exits were just whenever I was uncomfortable with the lack of movement...which was often.

HED has been 60 cents and has been elusive to catch the right swing as there is mostly flailing.

I faked ten trades and the results are as follows:

TLM, 6 trades, +8 cents per share, 300 shares = $24 less $60 commissions. (-$36)

HED, 4 trades, +14 cents per share, 200 shares = $28 less $40 commissions. (-$12)

Great grand total of (-$48) net.

I was down about $100 net after five trades and almost threw in the towel but decided I should keep going for the sake of experience at this point. So commissions were the difference between an on target day (1.3% overall) and the resulting loss (-1.2% overall).

I figure that fake trading a day like this is a great setup for trading a good trending or larger ranging day as I was able to squeak some winning trades in in such a tight range. Largest winner was 14 ents per share and the largest loser was 10 cents per share.

The market (TSX) opened and has remained under 9000 and I believe this is the issue as traders and investors cannot decide what to do. This may be a the beginning of a new drop in the market as a whole as it is trending down, if you can call this a trend today, but is bumping against the 8825 mark as support. I'm not into market prognostications though.

I guess I am going to call this a consolidation day. I do expect a surge one way or the other starting at mid afternoon though. I am not looking forward to tomorrows tight pivot points as that will make using the PP200 strategy difficult.

No matter, I am done even faking trade for today. I am hoping that tomorrow is a larger range day.

I just noticed that my account is reflecting only the cash amount as buying power. I must lose my margin capability at some point. I transferred all but a few hundred dollars to the TFSA in order to leave this account active and use it to cover the data fees, should there be any, so the fees are not withdrawn from the TFSA.

Jeff.