Not sweating it

I think I might be on the right track with the work I've been doing on my trading. I'm not stressing about things and I'm letting the signals guide me more often rather than trying to predict too much. There's still room for judgement, especially with cuts, which is good and bad.

The market is down today but better than early lows, perhaps because we were weak yesterday. I put on a few shorts on the close and they've performed reasonably well. ALL has edged up 2 cents but IPL is down 9 and PRU down 6 to 349. There were a couple of longs that I was tempted to sell out on the close and I sold them in the first hour or so after the possibility of a recovery faded. Out of some BSL at 77, OST at 101 and DJS at 327.5 for minor profits on each.

With DJS, I'm vaguely bullish but I'm happy enough to take the little bit that I made and to wait for another potential buy. I was a few cents away from selling half out at a target level of 341 yesterday so it's slightly disappointing to have got out at 327 and 328 (v 321) but the main thing is that I'm comfortable with the cut. My aim is to trade clean swings and the break of yesterday's low means that this has completed a 3 or 4 day move up.

I cut OSH at 634 for a 6 cent loss and this is the one that's a little frustrating. Yesterday, it ran hard early and I had an order to sell half at a minor new high of 670. The stock dropped short of this and sold off strongly enough to actually close down on the day so I moved my stop in tight. I was reluctant to get out for roughly square early on because it looks like a pennant correction before another run up and it seemed reasonable to give the stock the chance to bounce with the overall market. That didn't happen and I got out at close to the intraday low.

It's good to see that the one swing approach meant that I put on short positions on the close despite feeling that the sell off was overdone and being mildly bullish and it was a judgement call to close out some longs too.

I've often written about trusting your plan and the struggles I've had with doing that but I'm finding it pretty easy to act on the signals at the moment.

4.12 A lacklustre day finished with the Asx 200 lower by 19 points.

I sold out of LYC at 122 after a minor down day and the lack of any momentum in a potential countertrend rally. Too dangerous to stay in. I added another short in WSA at 580 with a stop at 600. I'm looking for a lower high to have been made at a resistance level.

No particular highlights today although IPL was a reasonable performer. I'm happy to have got out of 5 positions without agonising and to have navigated the day for a very minor loss despite all those exits.