Terrible Week

After being up more than 100% this week I ended up losing more than 50% of the portfolio. That doesn't matter though because I definitely learned a lot from the sequence of events over this past week. The most important lesson to take away from this is to NOT BE GREEDY. When I saw the portfolio up 100%, for some reason I didn't take it. I felt that since the market went so far in my favor that it would offer me more than what it had already given me. WRONG! That was me becoming emotionally attached to the trade and that is the worst thing that you can do. It is said that becoming emotional is a sure way to lose and I proved.

I order to protect my money, from now on I will be following a strict set of rules(which will be drafted this weekend) and setting trailing stop orders for every trade. This way, in the event that I'm up 100% I won't have to worry about a positive trade going bad. I will also be closing out my positions on a daily basis, with the exception of a few long term trades.

Yesterday(Friday 4.17.09), I purchased 1 contracts of the AAPL May 125 Call(APVEE) for 5.80. A total transaction of 593.74. Although I have been getting burned on earnings all week, I know where I went wrong and will be sure to correct that with this trade. In the event that AAPL runs up on Monday and I see more than a 20% gain, I'm out(I will go over my news rules in the post that I plan to write tomorrow). FYI, AAPL is scheduled to release earning on Tuesday 4.28.09. This may end up being a longer term play, depending on how the technicals look next week. I will also go over my technical analysis on AAPL tomorrow

I'm embarrassed about posting this but, below is the Balance and transaction history for this week.

Current Balance: 699.37
For those who want to learn to be emotion free in their trades, let me know and I will send you a copy of "The Secrets To: Emotion Free Trading" by Larry Levin. Its a great read and I recommend that everyone take a look at it