I learned an important trading lesson today. 

 

I've always experience a lot of success as a software sales person and other aspects of life- so getting used to the "cutting losses" part of day trading has been tough for me to learn because I want to believe I'm right. 

 

I had three great trades on Thursday and Friday. Then I got cocky and entered a short position on $ETE at $8.48 as I thought there was no more room to spike - based on limited research. I had a "mental" stop at $9 and let fly past there to a monday morning spike to $10.20 where I no choice but to cover. Hindsight is 20/20 but this was a tough lesson to learn as it took me from positive to negative on the year. 

 

2 Lessons Learned:

 

1) Cut losses immediately if a trade goes against you...I didn't want to eat $250 but instead I ate $1200

2) Don't mess with volatile, choppy, high volume stocks (20-25 mn+ shares a day) 

 

I'm learning that this is a mindset, and I'll be adjusting mine as I continue to learn.