Friday, August 17, 2007

Talking, Charting, Men and Women

I had a blue with HL today. I was chatting about the markets and about charting- and she just got really pissed off at me.

Apparently she had bought some MIDAS shares after I mentioned to her a few days ago that it looked good.

Worse, she attributed a lot of false statements to me.

No where did I say that charting is a perfect crystal ball- I'm not god and I don't claim any special powers and I definitely can't see into the future with 100% accuracy.

Charting however does offer good insight. And it has a failsafe - stop loss - to prevent losing your money. Keep your loses small- stay out of the market during volatility. Keep to your rules. Be disciplined about it.

But if the chart looks good- I say so. MIDAS did look promising a few days ago- but it fell 20% in the last two days. In fact, virtually everything has.

There was no rebound- there was just more selling. A lot of people were expecting this week to be positive- but the strength of the sellers simply overwhelmed the buyers.

I just have to be more careful with talking with HL - sometimes I think she just wants a fight.

The other problem is that hanging around with HL has indeed caused my focus and my share trading disciplines.

Its hard to share trade when you are with someone who is so emotional and doesn't have the same trading methodology as you.

I've copied her bad habits of buying as the stocks go downward - increasing exposure, risk, and tying up capital.

I have to get away from her to rethink my strategy and trading plans.

Having her around - is just not good. She has the buy/hold/ rumor trade plans - which has lost a boatload of cash. Sometimes it works spectacularly esp. durin the bull run - but without a stop loss plan - she's gonna get sunk eventually.

I can't allow myself to be like that- but the more I spend with her... the problem is that if she knows my trading plans- it makes it harder for me to execute my stop losses. Because the moment- the shares rise up - she laughs at me mocking the strategy.

This is not a good environment to trade in.


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