Have you had your zinc today?

Day 21 - Wednesday
Total Account Value: $5803
Available Equity: $3092
Positions Opened: 6
Positions Closed: 6

Today was surely the exact polar opposite of yesterday.

• Yesterday I woke up afresh at home feeling that my cold had passed. This morning I woke up far away from my trading desk at my girlfriend's house with a croaky throat.
• Yesterday I had time to check the news and look over my open positions before 10am. This morning we were stuck in hellish traffic (1.5 hours to get from one side of the city to the other, which usually takes 45 minutes), while the newsman spoke of the Reserve Bank's interest rate hike. A nervous drive ensued. To be honest I was expecting my mobile to ring with a margin call.
• Yesterday I had a long position on oil which turned in a nice profit overnight. This morning my second attempt met with failure. Only just though! My stop loss was set just a few ticks too high and my "should-have" $300 win was actually a $100 loss.
• Yesterday most of my positions stagnated, sending my balance sharply downward into the close. Today every position played their part, forcing my balance upward in a late charge.

And all this happened despite losing MAP and ILU on the open and having to close the non-performing ARQ and IAG, which seems to have met an inpenetrable fortress of resistance at $5.70. However market depth has just changed at 4:30pm and it looks like buyers are regrouping for one last assault. I'm not worried that I exited a touch too soon. That's trading - you need to make decisions and stick by them.

Even though my short position on Rinker Group (RIN) was stopped out midway through the day, there was a clear opportunity to re-enter. This is the first time I've done this and it ended up in success (apart from the $20 extra brokerage). Just a warning to be careful when trailing stop loss orders, because I had placed one a little too close.

OXR, BHP and WPL all made some decent but unspectacular movements as did AXA, which I have shorted again (originally on April 20th) as it continues to make weaker and weaker "comebacks" since early March. There is now a triple divergence between price and MACD so we'll see what happens.

Fortescue Metals (FMG) met with resistance after solid gains in the past few days despite the mini-correction so I went short as it fell below the previous day's low (which was a spinning top on a volume spike). It fell heavily but since the stock was so thinly traded I exited $160 better off. Wouldn't want to push your luck shorting resources stocks in this kind of environment!

But my star pupil of the day was none other than zinc producer Zinifex (ZFX), which is up by $600 at this point in time. Used as a supplement, zinc speeds up the healing process after an injury. It's surely done that for me in the past two days!