I took a hit on SPX longs today...

Title of post says it all. I went short puts yesterday and closed out the trade today for a loss of around -$700. I had the put spread at 1025/1075 but market sank is continues to do so today. Out of emotions for wanting revenge on the market I immediately flip sides and went long NDX September puts. As of now I am at a lost on the NDX position due to my aggressive purchase price, but will be happy to hold through it in the next few sessions.

Reasons for shorting:

1) the $NAMO index is not yet bottomed to previous lows. -60 is what I am looking for, until oversold condition reemerges, and probably within the next two/three trading sessions.

2) Sentiment is negative, and with good data out today and stocks still did not rally leads one to think market is headed lower.

3) The ADP employment data will come out tomorrow. Everyone expects a terrible number, and Friday is big job's number.

I anticipate a fight around SPX between 1040 and 1060 but soon 1040 will fail. I give it a week, therefore I am long NDX September puts.

Day Trading

Timing a day trade is very crucial. For the past two weeks I have missed to big drops in the indices and I just cannot get over it. Knowing how fragile the market is right now I came really close to scoring big but due to bad timing in trades I missed out on most of the downward drops. On August 10 I was unable to participate on the short side of the SPX due to going all in on a PCLN short. I made a decent profit and will leave it at that. Just two days ago I went short the NDX via purchase of put spreads but sold them on the same day of purchase because I did not want to lose a four figure profit. Of course if I had held them all to the end of today I would have raked in 7 times the four figure profit I took. Man it almost hurts as much as losing money in a trade.

My touch on the markets' moves are getting better. However I should be very cautious now considering I have been unscaved the past two weeks. I guess preseving capital is much better than winning big in the market. Although if the market is ready for a third drop in the next week I hope I will be in it shorting.

From stocktwits commentors and my own technical analysis the market seems to be ready to fall again. The sentiment on Wall Street seems to be very pessemistic which is why I do not want to just go short the market. Yet if I have to put a number in I would expect the SPX to drop to 1060 before a bounce. I hope tomorrow we have an up day so I can plan on shorting it but if we hit 1060 first I have missed the next big drop. 1050 and 1020 are other support lines but I need to do a little more research before diving in with shorts. Pun intended.

To help myself become a better day trader I have linked a stocktwitter by the name of blackmart. I have been reading through blackmarkt's blog and found his entries on day trading very insightful. He lists all his trades at the end of the day and shows his gains and losses. Furthermore he talks about the periods of trading during the day that I think every type of trader should read. It talks about the 9:30 to 4:00 period of day trading.

http://blackmarkt.blogspot.com/2010/03/daytrading-time-zones.html

Market Indices Overview

Today at 2pm the market indices are slightly in the red except for the Dow which is hovering with about +20. I put in the three major indices: SPX, NDX, DJX as shown above to illustrate what I think is manipulation in the markets.

At 10am the Consumer Confidence Report came out at 50.4 which was below consensus. However with in a minute of the report the market jump on all three indices by more than 0.5%. Although I will add that also at 10am the State Street Investor Confidence Report (SSIC) came out, and that came in at 96. So maybe investors were buying because of the SSIC number. I do not buy that story though. As the day is progressing the market is slowly lower since the 10am sharp price jump.

Timing it Right.... I did not...

I purchased a NDX vertical-(1875/1900) put yesterday at $12.30 and sold it today at $13.85, a little to early. As the chart above shows there was a significant drop after where I sold. Market indicators at the time had techs continue to drop, but because financial companies and airlines were going up so I felt a turn to the upside was around the corner. Indeed the market pulled up around 10:30. Yet I should have let the momentum of the trend push me out of the trade versus my own instincts. The reason is because right after I sold the spread, two minutes later it was marked around $14.80. The spread peak was around $15.50 and that was easy money I did not pick up.

On the other hand it is always better to wish I had more gains than to accept a significant lost. Right now I am getting wacked on my YGE puts spread and feel I need to close them today. Not sure yet.

Mistake after mistake after mistake

I was hoping to start off the new year on a winning streak and at least end the year 2010 in the positive. In any case I went long GOOG options yesterday right before Google was to have their presentation to unveil the Nexus One. A couple of hours after I executed my trade I was already up over 15% but not expecting what would happen next I kept the options as the stock tumbled.


This is not my first trade of the year but I am posting it to remind myself how fortunate I was in this trade. What happened today was GOOG stock tumbling over $15. I had Jan10 630 call options and luckily I sold all of them right at today's open, which GOOG started off up $1. I did not even have the mentality to short GOOG after I exited the trade even though I knew full well the stock was breaking supports left and right. The reason for not shorting was because I was shell shock to have escape my call trade with a profit.

The technical indicators had the stock lower however I kept the call options overnight which was a major mistake. I knew the stock was getting weak but did not anticipate on a $15+ downward day for the stock on a otherwise subdued trading ranging for the overall indexes. Next time I will make sure not to flip back and forth between going short and long on GOOG and instead stick to my original plan. My original plan was to buy Puts which I did but sold one day after for a measly gain and went long on the same day. I had studied the pattern that GOOG's upward short term trend was slowing and anticipated on a drop, just timed it way off.

On a side note around 3pm I bought a NDX vertical put anticipating on accelerated drop in the NASDAQ due to major tech stocks such as AAPL, AMZN, RIMM, IBM, INTC, & GOOG all were looking to accelerate downward. That I am making a profit on and will probably close out the position tomorrow morning to avoid any positive push Friday's unemployment numbers may bring to the market.

Taking it one day at a time because there is nothing better to do than living in the present.