A Fellow ART OF TRADING Member Had a "So-So" Day

Got this email today from another fellow member:

"Hi Stewie;

I am glad to hear that Keith and Ben did so well. I agree the set ups were so good, in fact that I was bombarded with so many alarms I couldn’t keep tract of them. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. I wasn’t quick enough to catch all those spikes and before I knew it we were going down. To me, the market kept feeling like it was going to sell. I unloaded MOS shortly after 11:00 as it had lost $73.00. I’ll include a pic of my account. I know how much work you do and I really appreciate it. I’m just amazed at my own thickness. If you have any thoughts that might save me from myself please let me know. In the mean time I’ll continue to read and reread all that you have sent us. Regards, Guy

PS spare nothing in telling me exactly what you think; I respect you and I have a thick skin."

My response:

Hi Guy,

Okay, first of all i agree with you that there were MANY alerts that went off this morning and since it was a good day in the market, many alerts did go off and when they went off, they flew right past the trigger prices and some just kept running! THAT"S USUALLY A GOOD THING! LOL. What do i always say about the best trades? THEY WORK RIGHT AWAY! Best trades do not give you breathing room to get in. I am talking about momentum trades of course. Momentum trades that work right away do not end up making you 1-2% RETURNS. These types of trades end up making 5,10,15% gains in a very short period of time!

Ok, now having said all of the blah blah above: I do not think you had a 'bad day'. Why do you think you had a bad day? It is because the market was up 100 points and you were down $73? That means nothing. How many times did you/we have good days when the market was down? MANY TIMES!! Do not judge your performance relative to the market's daily performance! Ever! You will go crazy doing that. Judge your performance based on what the market offered you based on YOUR style of trading and the setups that you planned on trading. For example: My best trading days do not come when the stock market is up 2-3%. As a matter of fact, i usually do poorly on strong market up days. My best trading sessions have come during a quiet market that is flat or slightly up or down because my kind of momentum stocks are moving front and center and trending strongly while the rest of the market is 'quiet'.

I will have to agree with you that even tho we saw a good day in the market and to have a 'good day' today one needed to be attack the stock setups quickly and take profits on the big spikes but overall today was NOT an easy day to make money and i guarantee you a lot of people would agree with me that today was not an easy to make big $$$ trades. Simply because the moves were fast and furious and the trends died quickly! You saw quick spikes and many spikes fizzled away. I am confident that if you trade how you traded today, you will have a better outcome on other days, especially on days where yo catch big trends! I am sure of it

Also, one more piece of advice is: maybe you had too many alerts setup and they all triggered around the same time and you found yourself running around like a chicken with your head cut off! Next time try and setup maybe 5 good quality patterns/setups that you deem of HIGHEST quality/probability(for example VECO yesterday, i told everyone VECO was the best setup in the bunch and today is exploded higher and many member caught it and had good days due to VECO alone) and setup alerts that trigger the prices and quickly judge or (worst come to worst) put BUY STOPS at these levels to trigger the trades for you if a certain price is tagged.

I hope this helps and once again i will repeat: DO NOT JUDGE YOUR DAILY PERFORMANCE RELATIVE TO THE MARKET'S! EVER!

god bless and happy trading tomorrow!