You win some, you lose some

Reading twits on stocktwits I see a lot of people say they are getting stopped out today. This is good on the part that a lot of the guys on that site know what they are doing and being truthful with their results. I am grateful I was on the other side of the trade today. Yet yesterday was not an easy night for me to sleep through.

Even today in the morning after the 8:30AM weekly jobs numbers coming out -473k, which is a lot lower than consensus. I thought, sh*t. Everyone is optimistic in the morning, yesterday could have been a bottom. It is never easy when one goes all in with a trade. I was short but others went long. Trends were still for more downside but a lot of people bought into the market yesterday. I feel the market has been more at a range than going in a trending direction. (I have been lucky enough to manage a small gain through it. There were trades I made this month that I knew I should not have made and got lucky with small losses. Best example is two weeks ago on my OEX trade. I twitted it on stocktwits. I went all in with selling a vertical call spread with the OEX weekly and got a small loss.) These experiences shape people into being good traders if they remember not to make the same mistakes. That is very hard to do.

For the year to date I am slightly positive, but since my very first trading loss of 2008 to date I am still very deep in the red. Taxes and commissions has wiped out a lot of my gains for this year, but getting green makes me happy. I know how much others feel when they lose, but its apart of the game. You win some and you lose some. Just make sure you do not lose more than you can afford to. Its very difficult to dig yourself back out of a deep hole.

Learn to blog or record all your trades no matter if its a win or a loss. I did not post much in 2008 and 2009 because most of those days I was losing and wanted to forget about my losses. Yet it is not the right thing to do. Not learning from mistakes is a cardinal sin in the trading world. I to this day still have trouble following with that, but that is apart of the job if I want to "succeed" in trading.

Best of luck to all who are trading.

My view on the market:

The market still seems to be in a range. From mid May of this year to date the SPX range has been between 1020 and 1120. There could be a possibility for the SPX to test 1020, but since it held 1040 yesterday I do not think 1020 will be hit in August. I could be wrong with revised 2nd quarter GDP number tomorrow coming out, but Mr. Bernake's speech will be key. If we do test 1020, it will not be a good side for long term traders.