Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Update for 20100428

Exciting day! I had three trades, comprised of 1 full win, 1 full loss, and 1 partial win because of a reversal signal (I was short E/U and an E/U buy came up). HOWEVER, at second glance, the reversal signal was not actually valid (what looked like a peak on the chart was not a peak when you checked the overlay levels which I hurriedly forgot to do), and the trade continued to profit that I was not a part of.

Here's the detail on that reversal: I had plans to meet up with a guy at Starbucks to swap a wired apple keyboard for a wireless one (a deal for me), and I had a tough time getting wireless setup once I was at sbux. I finally did, and by the time I logged in, it was already a few minutes past the time when I should have closed the trade. Price was in my favor at that point, so I moved my SL on the trade to where I would have closed it out had I been at the screen at the time. Price retraced, hit the moved up SL by a pip, and I was out with 1/3 the profit. With nothing else I could do, I closed the laptop and waited for the guy I was meeting.

I came back to my apartment to see the E/U had blown through my original TP level. Now, I can play what-ifs all day long, but I imagine if I had just called the guy I was meeting and said I was running 15 minutes late, I might have caught that the reversal was not a real reversal, held on to the trade like I should have, and ended up with full profit. Who knows.

At the end of the day, I thought I got a $30 break on a computer accessory, but I (arguably) ended up with a $570 opportunity cost. Lesson learned: most people are forgiving, and if you KNOW something is coming up, politely ask them to wait while you deal with it.

Down 2.6% since inception (4/19/2010)

3 comments:

jossoco said...

I'm debating whether that's the real lesson here. That guy could have had an equally important thing he needed to get to 15 minutes AFTER you meeting, ya know?

jossoco said...

*your meeting

jec said...

In which case he could have told me that when I called to tell him I'd be late, and we could have rescheduled, no big deal?