Frustration

Wow, it's crazy I haven't posted for a week. I guess with the holiday weekend I didn't really do anything. Lately I have not really traded at all, and when I have I have taken losses. I day traded GOOG and AAPL, both times I followed my rules and exited when it broke trend on what I was watching. This is frustrating at the same time because at different times during the day I would have been at a profit and not a loss. However, to get to that profit I would have had to hold through a large loss, and I am never guaranteed that the loss will reverse, so I was technically correct in my actions and it will be helpful in the long run as far as probability and success goes but I still hate to take losses. Not to mention I was thinking back to where I was before and thinking if only I knew then what I knew now I would still have a majority of that cash. Instead I am back down close to my lows after the whole CROX situation, and since then I have dropped even more but that was with following rules.

I really can't dwell on it, there were lessons to learn and unfortunately it was very expensive to learn them. Jeff is very right, it is hard to trade in this market, if it is in fact a bear market.

Part of me wants to just sit out if it's a matter of capital preservation and its much easier to trade in a bull market. Although I have no idea when we would get into a bull market again(if we are in fact in a bear market). And I really want to learn to trade or at least survive in a bear market but I now feel undercapitalized again, which could be good because I'll take less risk but I will really have to be religious about my rules, as I should be anyways.

I can definitely see how some people can get fed up, I have drawn my account down 3 times now to this level, two other times were just because I was taking too much risk, this one partially that reason because of CROX, so I guess that explains it, however to keep giving that money back wears on you. I am by no means going to quit at all, it just means I have a lot more learning to do, but to learn I must trade, and survive to trade.

Today I tried to enter puts at the close on the SPY, Ameritrade was messing up and didn't fill the order for some reason so I cancelled and decided I would wait till tomorrow to take a position and day trade it. I can't believe these two rallies, as Jeff and Eric said, the sharpest rallies happen in the context of a bear market, its crazy to think though that the market can jump 5% on news of a possible rate cut, which in reality would do nothing for the present times. I am inclined to buy puts tomorrow if we do not break above 1475 on the S&P, I think if we start up again tomorrow we will give it back during the day, but if we start down we will continue down, again who knows I will have to watch the chart but that is what seems logical to me.

Bottom line is this volatility is tough, I wonder if in a bear market it's better to use a time stop, like give myself a time period to be right and if it doesn't happen within that given time period I exit. That partially seems wreckless because it could result in larger than 2% losses which is what I should still limit myself to.

Tomorrow is always another day to trade and make money back, but I could also lose, which is what I don't want to do so it is making it harder to be a mechanical trader.