I want to give a special 'thanks so much' to FT71, Murray T, Trada, TraderNik, Deringer, Bitstream, DanoXP, Nitro and others for your constructive contributions to this thread. I am sure Giannos appreciates your input. Many times others (read me) are having similar problems. The fact that you guys spent some of your invaluable time offering advice means a lot to others who read you - not just on this post , but elesewhere here at ET. Thank you!
One of the most astute pieces of advice in this thread. Why would you want to be long a stock that is down on a day when everything is up? I know the newbie thought is it will catch a bid but typically they don't. It's heavy for a reason. Why swim upstream?
From these charts it appears MSFT was not a clear short n cover on Mon or Tue (maybe Wed). It appears MSFT just traded with the market (Nasdaq 100 & SP500) until Friday about an hour after open - then it deviated.
Be careful out there! The smaller risk VS larger potential the better of course. If it goes against you either switch side or stop out. But since you already have enough of money why not trade very safe? Why scalping if it means a bad risk/reward?
Are there really any good reasons one can actually provide for a nasdaq stock to go up or down a quarter on any given day -- especially on expirations week? A head trader at some institution spilling his frosty on the keyboard is as good a reason as any.
This was one of the major reasons I entered the trade long...I noticed that MSFT would follow the general direction of the Q's and therefore, I followed suit......
Nitro: thanx for the post......At this point I really dont care about sounding "dumb"....But what is the SP rebalancing?.....Also I know it was triple witching day..... what is the proper play for a newbie on such days
YW. You don't sound dumb. Although I know what these things are, I have made a similar mistake recently of not realizing that one was taking place and it cost me. I vowed to never let it happen again. Here is an article that may help. The idea was to go from a total outstanding shares capitilization of stocks weighted in the index to capitilization based on the actual float that is traded. This removes the influence of shares that are owned by controlling "families" and rarely trade. WMT and MSFT were two of the biggest that would be negatively impacted by this rebalance. C and XOM gained. http://www.northerntrust.com/library/corporate/whitepapers/SPFreeFloatWP.pdf Look at the "closing" print on MSFT - it did 21,000,000 shares on that print alone. "Someone" had to exit and eat the drop near the low of the week, and "someone" was more than happy to take it off their hands after about .70 lower from the beginning of the week. As for trading on these exp days, there are always stocks that have and edge to them, but you have to know how to find them. Look at QCOM and study why you should have been in it if long is the direction you wanted that day. BTW, I missed QCOM too and I even had it on my montage, but today I know I shoulda nailed it. I have commited the lesson to long term memory. Finally I will say this. There are only two ways you can play defense in trading, by trading small size, and/or to try some sort of hedge. All you did was play offense with your whole body on a day that probably required you to dip your toes in. nitro
I just wanted to take this time to say thanx to all the traders who have taken their time to read my boo-hoo story and post on this thread.....It means ALOT to me to have such great traders take time and provide their feedback.....Thanx ET for having these great guys on your site.....Also, I would hope that any other newbies that have come across this will read it and LEARN from it.....Without money managament you are dead in this game, and I know this all to well, and actually preach it believe it or not....So how did thid happen to me?.....After a few bottles of wine and a bucket full of tears, I came to the conclusion that fear crippled me and my emotional state took over my logical brain...I no longer was thinking like a defensive trader, but was now in the dead zone.....I was having "visions" of what the stock was gonna do next and were it was going to go next....with absoultely NO sound reasons...Just visions.....I jump sides only becasue I figured long isnt working lets try short....STUPID move considering again, I had no sound rashional behind this decision....Just another vision....When things arent going your way, you need to take 10 STEPS back and re think your approach and your game plan....It would be like Dan Marino having a bad day passing and deciding to start running the ball himself.....We all know that he had a lifetime of - 10 yards or something like that.....My point is, that I dont think doing the opposite works....Thats what hurt me the most....Jumping from long to short or vise versa is not always the proper call.....Stopping yourself out, cutting losers and having PATIENCE seems to be the right play.....I had alot of time on the clock, but threw myself into the 2 minute hurry up offence.....And I am not expereinced enough to run this kind of offence....The market is a long game and a long season if you want to survive and I should have taken the loss and went over my mistakes in practice to get ready for the next game.... I will be back to play this game again...This time with a knew DEFENSIVE co-ordinator...... Someone once told me that this biz is not about making money, its about NOT losing money and once you learn that, the profits will come in time.....