Trading Diary

Today I am trying to exit from my previous strategy and initiate the new one.

9:54am

I went into today short 100 GOOG and 500 QQQQ in my trading account (I also have 1 BRKB in this account. I added 500 QQQQ and 100 HANS to the short position in pre-market or the first few minutes of trade. Let's see how it goes. Barrons had a negative article on GOOG (as did the Economist) over the weekend. In Friday trading GOOG's share price got pinned down to the $390 strike at the option expiration. Maybe it can fall a little now that the options expiry is over. I see the market as a whole as needing to consolidate a little after last week's rally. HANS is very volatile and so sometimes is good for daytrading though often spreads are big and often it can't be shorted and because of the relatively low liquidity spikes in either direction can easily appear from nowhere. So not the ideal daytrading stock. But I don't have any other real ideas.

I have the market running on my laptop while working on other stuff on my desktop. Using the F9 key on my Mac I can get all the windows to be visible nicely spreadout across the screen and monitor various stocks for anything unusual out of the corner of my eye....

10:10am

Perfect reason not to trade individual stocks in large amounts - $5 spike up in GOOG came out of nowhere in 5 minutes. $2 of the spike happened in 1 minute. As I write the stock is falling back. No news out, nothing. I don't need this kind of stress. If I had half the number of shares I wouldn't worry.

10:23am

GOOG's back in the red for the day LOL

12:53pm

I am tracking the SP500 index. Tech stocks are showing relative strength today and it is hard to tell which way the market will go by just looking at the NASDAQ indices alone. The SP500 index though is much easier to read and if it goes down it is hardly likely the NASDAQ will go up. Looking at correlations across multiple indices and securities is one of the ways I try to work out what will happen next. Most individual traders and market commentators seem only able to focus on one thing in isolation.

1:40pm

With AAPL showing relative strength today and everything else near or at session lows. I add 100 AAPL to the bundle of shorts. Maybe this is getting too clever for my own good. But I figure the downside can't be too bad. Now I am using my full daytrade buying power.

2:47pm

With indices at session lows I bought to cover half my QQQQ and GOOG positions. The remaining positions are around 6% of net worth each and so much closer to my comfort zone. I am also well within the overnight margin requirements. So from now on if the market goes down more good, if it goes up a bit no big deal.

3:31pm

I covered the HANS position for about $500 profit. Actually I accidentally pressed the button :) I had the order set up and was looking for the price to fall back a bit and then accidentally leant on my laptop.... anyway the probability of more gain is too low now to make reshorting it worthwhile.

7:24pm

Well it was a good trading day, but we will need to wait till tomorrow to complete the transition plan. But at least I no longer have an outsized position in an individual stock.