Trading for a living

Today didn't end up as strong as I thought it would, but it was still decent--up 1.17%. I've got a couple of stocks in my portfolio that just aren't moving with the trend. I'm thinking about booting them out if they don't show some action by Friday.

Now that things are looking a bit better for the year, I went back and looked at the mess that I made of August. One of the concepts in Trading for a Living (see earlier post) is to quit trading for the rest of the month if your portfolio drops from 6% to 8% in value. That would have put me at about 36% at the end of August. Instead I traded myself down another 12% by the end of August.

Although it is a bit arbitrary, I think it is a good idea to refocus after that kind of draw down. It is obvious that things aren't quite working out and taking a few weeks away from the market can be enlightening (I wish I could speak from experience, but I can't--at least not yet).