Minimum effort for maximum profit

Day 24 - Monday
Total Account Value: $5988
Available Equity: $3492
Positions Opened: 3
Positions Closed: 2

I'm relieved to say that not much went wrong today! In my most prosperous Monday so far, all open positions grew steadily throughout the day with the exception of my only remaining short, RIN, which I had believed to be strongly bearish. There was little need to overtrade as my "portfolio" was setup last Friday. I had entered a few longs then that were indifferent, leading me to spew out negativity in my last daily posting. Off days or "boring" days followed by positive days seems to be the common pattern in my trading. I've realised that there's more harm than good in trying to make every day a winner (by going for risky "quick win" trades).

My new data based on weekly charts helped immensely. Since the market opened well up, I filtered my list to display only moderate and strong bullish stocks, of which there were 11 (out of 45). Two of the four strong bullish stocks I had identified (JBM and BNB) were already in long positions and surged ahead strongly. The other two were Australand Holdings (ALZ), which is slower moving low-price stock and ZFX, which benefitted me so much last week. I set a price alert for ALZ at one tick above a recent high, and went long on ZFX as it gapped open with strong buyer support.

I did not even look at the rising stocks I had tagged bearish. This would be a complete waste a time. Perhaps late in the day shorting opportunities would arise but for now going against the trend would be flirting with disaster. This kind of discipline prevented me from staring at charts/order books for too long and overtrading.

Two other longs were set (MAP and AWC, which gapped up and overcame the 20-day SMA) and that was my trading done for the day. Just set and forget. I actually had no choice as I had an appointment to attend a medical test for fructose intolerance. This involved sitting in a room with a bunch of old ladies taking a breath test every 15 minutes. I was the last to leave after 4pm, so I was hoping that not too many entry or exit signals had gone begging.

It was a pleasant surprise to see a daily profit of nearly $800. BNB was the big winner with a lovely 3.9% daily gain. However when is anything ever completely perfect? The downside is that having no open short positions leaves me vulnerable and some of the big gainers look ready for a gap down or stagnation. All I can do is wait.

Also found a great, comprehensive article about common trading mistakes that is a must read for all new traders: http://www.decisionpoint.com/TAcourse/TradeMistakes.html