When the blog was started it was to track the trading I was doing, which wasn’t that exciting or active. Lindsey mentioned that she was interested in blogging about her trading and that she could post daily about her trading adventures and market thoughts and observations. Between the two of use, it seemed that the blog would be lively enough to keep some people interested, and that’s the main reason for having a blog.

Lindsey learned quickly that options is not an easy game to trade. I knew this, I have previously been screwed sideways with a ping-pong paddle with options. I learned a lot from that time, but apparently not everything I could.

At some point I was sure that Citigroup Chittygroup was going to have bad news come out and thought that I could play this news. The problem was that when the news came out it was more of a relief for the stock buyers/sellers instead of terrorizing the stock value. This is when I should have bailed on my loss. Taking a loss is what makes the stock market traders have longevity in the market. Something that I need to learn, still. Taking a loss is like admitting defeat, where I should just look at it as not being on the right side of a stock trade.

So how does someone with an account value of $9,550 (up from $5,000) end today with their account value at $647? Stupidity. Ignorance. Being a Retard.

The amount of money bothers me. But I think that knowing I could have gotten out on a couple occasions with either a small loss or nearly breakeven is what hurts the most. The mental loss is something that I’m not well prepared to handle. I’ve thought about what caused me to lose the money, besides being stupid and not setting a loss. I was going for the big score.

At one time I had 50 puts on Chitty. What a moronic move to make unless I knew the stock was going to drop or I had thousands of dollars to waste.

Anyway, at this point I’m going to take the weekend and figure out what I plan to do next. I would invest another $5k into Retard Trader and start over (well, it would be more like a re-buy) but I’m not sure how to make this site worth the money. While I have the money in a trading account I feel somewhat obligated to have some action and trade daily.

I’m looking for some opinions and help here. What should I do?

Okay this is not working. I can’t do this anymore. If I do, my account will go to $0. I exited my JCP calls when it was at $40.70 today and after that mess up, I am all cash, $2300 in cash. I’m thinking $2300 is a lot less than the $5000 I started with, but it’s also a lot more than $0. I’ve lost $2000 in two days. So this is not working. If it’s not working, better not keep doing it. I’m trying to figure out what to do. I could:

1. put more money in my account, put in like $20,000 and turn it into a race to make $100,000 in profit. I could also put $20,000 but make it a temporary thing and withdraw the $20,000 after my account is back up there.
2. just keep daytrading with my $2300
3. stop daytrading, take a chill pill and lie in wait for the perfect trade
4. just quit

#1 sounds good to me – it’s a lot more practical to daytrade with $20000 than $2300. #4 sounds like the smart thing to do so I’d better not do that. #3 sounds good too- just wait for a sure thing. I could be waiting just a few days or for weeks, but wait until I find a sure thing.

Hmm… Any other ideas out there? What do you suggest I do?

I’ve seen some entertaining trading bloggers stop blogging, some quit without notice, others gave up just to give up.

I’m not much of a quitter. In fact, I usually do best when challenged personally by friends or family. I’m thinking that even though the timing was wrong with my Chitty puts, I was right and being right is something that I just can’t get enough of, ever.

So I’ll be looking to sell my current positions and put all the money into one all-in position. Then I’ll continue to do that. While I’m doing that, I’ll be adding money into an account that has futures enabled so that I can be super cool and trade the YM like my hero.

One reason I haven’t added $20k into my account (yet) is because Michael warned me about the Lindsey Zone:

Reason #2: it just seems like I should be able to find that 100% play that will get me back in the game.

Reason #3: It appears my brokerage ignores pattern daytrader rules. I can do as many roundtrips in a day as I want even though my account value is below $25000. I have only been with this brokerage for 7 weeks so maybe they haven’t gotten around to placing restrictions on my account yet. But if no pattern daytrader restrictions are placed on my account, I should be able to add less than $20k into my account and do just fine. I haven’t decided what amount to add yet.

I continue to monitor the market. A lot of sectors such as retail, airlines, and semi-conductors are making new lows, as if they are predicting a recession ahead. They’ve been doing this month after month while many momentum stocks linger near their highs. AAPL, GOOG, AMZN, BIDU, FSLR, RIMM – off their highs but not off enough. There’s no fear in the market yet. It feels like it’s too late to short, too early to buy. I am just waiting. I scalped some CROX today which adds a few measly dollars into my account, but no position trades for me yet.

There are the reasonable things for me to do, like being calm and trading only what I think is a good trade instead of rushing things or using a quarter flip to determine a trading direction. The killer for me is the slow process that I encounter trading. I’m not very use to having a set amount of daily trades I can make, but with a sub-$25k account that’s the only choice. Maybe I should deposit $25k and start from there… but that’s what I gave Lindsey a hard time about.

Maybe I’ll just take it slow and easy the boogster way. He didn’t care how many of his readers dropped off, he held fast to his temporary rule of not posting his trades all the time. Also there’s the once-daily (on average) post that he makes. There’s some decent chart reading skills that I’ve learned from boogster.

Of course, I’m aways intrigued by whatever Sloping Tim has to say (I would read nearly anything he posted, except for maybe bible excerpts).

Recently Tim and Mike (boogster) had some different views on DUG since nobody is always right, I think that one of them wound up being more correct than the other.

Well, until I decide what to do, I’m sitting on the sh*t that I was before: 1 call CITI, 3 calls FXI, and some nearly pinksheeted stocks.

No, it’s not death and gloom for me anymore because I’m wiring $5k into a new account and starting over in the Red Bull Air Race Retard race, only this time I’m depositing my money into an account with futures trading enabled. Do I know anything about futures? Not a damn thing. But I have a general sense of direction for the market and think that I could squeeze out some decent wins.

Tomorrow I’ll be walking into my local bank branch and whipping out my wallet onto the table, then ordering some wench to get busy and wire my money away. If you think that you can watch me fail a second time, you might be right. But if you want to bet against me, do it here publicly. Comment away, tell everyone what you think. Hell, I’ll bet people here personally if they want, I think know that I can make money in this stock market.

I’ll let you know when the money is wired and in the account, you’ll see me bragging about it. I’ll be making money in no time.

Have a happy weekend. Oh ya, and check out this link that became a StumbleUpon most popular link for a couple days.

For you news wanting people, here’s some worthless news crap regurgitated:

Humbled U.S. consumers, scared by marching gasoline prices and a bleeding job market, slowed their spending in April.

Personal consumption increased by a weak 0.2% compared to the month before, half of the 0.4% gain in March, the Commerce Department said Friday.

Worse yet, when adjusted for rising prices, April spending went nowhere, or 0.0%.

“Consumers are still spending, but just enough to keep up with price increases and nothing more,” said Joel Naroff, who runs an economic consulting firm.

Inflation is a lurking problem that could worsen. A price index for personal consumption expenditures rose a benign 0.2% in April compared to March. Excluding food and energy, prices rose a mere 0.1%. But the gauge scrutinized by economists, the PCE price index excluding food and energy, increased 2.1% year-over-year in April for a second month in a row — a bit too high for comfort. Federal Reserve officials unofficially define their statutory goal of price stability as inflation of 1.5% to 2%.

My overnight holdings should give you an idea of how my account value plunged today. Here is what I am stuck with holding overnite:

JCP Jan08 $40.00 Calls JCPAH – 6 calls
bought at $3.32 avg price today
closing price $2.75
stock price when entered $42.50

JCP Jan08 $42.50 Calls JCPAR – 12 calls
bought at $1.95 today
closing price $1.32
stock price when entered $42.70

The stock closed at $41.65 today. The $42.50 calls for $1.95 per contract looked like a deal to me because I saw loads of it being gobbled up for $3.00 a contract a couple of weeks ago. Also what’s interesting is the open interest for the Jan08 $45.00 calls is pretty high at 22900. Stochastics are at oversold so that’s good. Also the Nasdaq has been down 4 days in a row now and I think it is due for a bounce.

We’ll see what tomorrow brings. If JCP plunges tomorrow and takes my account value down with it, I may just drop out of the race.