I don't have a very high win rate. And I'm working on it. I don't think it's necessarily me being on the wrong side of the order flow, but rather I'm not getting in where I'm supposed to. Working on my "multiple time frame" game this year and thinking a little harder before committing my energy to it. However, other positional traders around me are pushing me to throw out even 100 shares just to be in a stock that looks semi-attractive. The thing is... there's no better way for us to commit to a setup than to have some ego or emotion in the stock. Would you agree? But let's skip that issue for now.

          I wanted to write a short post about how risk management and the basic understanding of proper risk/reward setups have been vital to my development as a trader. I took about a dozen trades today, losing in all of them but 2. The first 'winner' was ADM which I screwed up on, hence the little quotes. Somehow I managed to let a $400 winner turned into $100 booked. Unacceptable, but let's leave that for another day. The other winner was RIMM which had faded back to the ~$60 level from yesterday. I noticed the volume being at 59.95 and started accumulating the position. Often I had to smack the bid when it dropped, but I just kept noticing price action not really dropping. I accumulated my largest acceptable risk at $59.95 and gave me to LOD, about 16 cents of risk for a chance to test the pivot at $60.80. I did sell some into strength just to lock in the profit and ultimately was able to get out my second half of my position right under the pivot level. The stock did go up to $62 but not with a J-Hook. My job isn't to catch the whole move. All I can do is create a detailed plan with reasonable logic and give it the proper risk/reward parameters. The RIMM trade ultimately took me from down ~$400 to +$300. Chop!

         One more thing.... don't take me for some arrogant kid who think I'm Soro & Friends. I'm really grateful for RIMM working out. In fact, I even took almost the rest of the day off after that to recover psychologically. Bottom line is I have a lot to work on, and I know that. I'm not quitting anytime soon. Don't worry. 6 years to reach the top.