Day 13

It's good to be back. I was really tired this morning. I think the day off yesterday derailed my body from it's usual schedule.

I want to point out that Apple didn't shoot up today. Thank god. I hate seeing stocks going against the market for days, because it dramatically increases the risk of timing them. I stayed away from Apple today because I feel like it is watching me watch it. I want the dust to settle for a bit before I get back in bed with it.

My new favorite stock is NVDA. I also have learned that it is more sensitive to bad news than Apple. This may be slightly inaccurate. It is representative to usual Apple, but currently Apple has been defying gravity. So what I should be saying is that NVDA is representing the old Apple I like.

Today I took on risk because I was a little annoyed about missing yesterday. Yesterday I kept checking my phone and cringing whenever I saw an opportunity. I was thinking of getting setup so I can trade on my phone, but maybe that is too crazy.

Anyways, back to today's risk. You have a much better chance of predicting a stock movement after you have watched a significant gain or loss. So if in the first hour of the day, the stock shoots up 4%, chances are pretty damn good it will at least dip to 3% at some point in the day. The higher the initial percent, the higher chance you have of profiting on the zigzag. This does not apply around major announcements such as company earnings (as well as other company earnings which have relationships with the company you are watching.... example would be Nvidia saying they trippled their sales of graphic chips.... then you can probably guess Apple has something up their sleeve so Apple will probably go up), currency fluctuations, market conditions, and fed announcements.

So today I saw NVDA hanging out around $8.38. From then it shot up to $8.50. I put a short limit order for $8.60. It got triggered. Then it shot up to $8.80. I decided to then buy even more to dollar cost average. I now had 3000 shares at $8.76. Eventually it went into $8.90s, but I knew it was coming down. The market has been shooting up all week. Yesterday, was kind of flat and today we have the Friday evening scare where no one likes to be in the market, which almost always means the price goes down right before close. Eventually it went down and I was able to profit.

10/31/2008 NVDA COVER 3000 $8.6698
10/31/2008 NVDA SHORT 2000 $8.8202
10/31/2008 NVDA SHORT 1000 $8.60
GAIN: $231.00