trying out shorts

Well, since this market has been more down than up lately, I've gotten
into a few shorts. BUCY I got bounced out of pretty quick on an up day
at a 5% loss. FCX and TRAK I still have. I can see why people don't
like to short: it's less reward. Also, it seems like this market is
choppy, so everything's cancelling out. I should probably get out of
both of them at a good spot, but then I'd probably be tempted to do
someting more risky.

My last long is AP, which has had some really strong days lately. It's
also #1 stock in the #3 group on IBD.

Another long I'm watching is NTSC. It's setting some new highs on
pretty big volume, although it's avg vol is pretty low.

so this is what a correction is like

Wow, haven't posted in a week and look whats happend. My portfolio
shrank from 10 stocks down to 2:

CTRN-my last half hit a 20% trailing stop and sold at 45.5 (breakeven)
Although now it's back to $50 after earnings.

USB-was lagging down towards my stop, so I sold it for breakeven.

TBBK-dropped way below 50dma. Has recovered some, but not above 50d.

KCS-failed to breakout. Sold at 4% stop. Has continued to plunge below
50dma.

IFO-sold remaining half Monday on HEAVY bounce. It has rallied back
some, but closed the day down hard today after being $2 up all morning.
This was a fun ride. I closed the 2nd half of my stake up 35%! At one
point it was up 50%, a first for me.

DIL-sold remaining half after 2 down days on heavy vol. It has
continued to trend down.

FNSR-closed below 50dma. Still down there.

DTLK-failed to breakout. Still down.

So, as you can see, this selloff has been pretty brutal, although I feel
I've handled it very well. My portfolio is down about $500 from it's
peak, but that really happened before I could get out of most things and
was a consequence of trying to give my winners room. I'm still up 8%
overall, which I think is pretty good for 2 months of trading. And this
correction was a good time to do housecleaning. I'm glad I did.
Everything I got out of was weak and is worse off, except CTRN, which
has rebounded.

However, I'm not totally out, yet. I still have half my AP stake, which
hit a new high today! And it did so on the highest volume since the
breakout. There may be better things yet to come for AP. Also, I'm
still in AOB, currently up 8%. It seemed to have overhead resistance
today and was up in the morning and closed slightly lower, although that
is par for the whole market today.

General consensus is that there's more selling ahead. Should be
interesting to see how the week closes on Friday.

IFO is out of the gate

Up another $1 at open today.  It's pretty much buoying my portfolio, the rest of which is down at open.  Stupid fed meeting this afternoon.

Sank the proceeds from yesterday into doubling my holding in AOB, which was up 6% for me, and buying a stake in DTLK, which was a maui recommendation yesterday.

two more new winners

Man, big movement today by two of my newer holdings: IFO and DIL.

IFO looked to be on the move last night.  It was up yesterday on good volume and then had huge after-hours movement.  Today it broke out on HUGE volume and was up 18%.  It very well could be on the way back up to the $20s again. 

DIL had a really strong day and rose 10% again.  Made a new high again on bigger volume than yesterday and is now up 30% for me.  The beautiful part is that I bought more last Friday when it was up 6% from my buypoint.

I locked in half of my stake in both of these today at 25% with limit sell orders.  I was very tempted to let both of them ride, but I decided that I would stick to my new rule for a while.  If it turns out later that it looks like it needs tweaking, I'll consider that later.

I also scaled out of half of my CTRN holdings on Friday at 56.89 (25%).  Plowed that money into buying more DIL and picking up 1 key of FNSR.

ERS had a climax run last week, followed by 3 days of HUGE volume down days.  It attempted a rebound today.  I am glad I did not try to stay in that stock.  Like they say, you will never time the top perfectly.

Current holdings up over 20%: CTRN, AP, IFO, DIL

ABAX out/AOB in

Oh yeah, and I got out of ABAX after that whole earnings rollercoaster.
It dropped way down before earnings, came back up the following day, and
dropped again the next. I scaled 25% of my shares at an 8% gain and the
rest at a 6% gain. Not much, but I didn't like the look of the high
volume selling days with a lower volume gaining day in between them.

CTRN gapped way up this morning. I put a limit order in to scale out
half my shares at 25%, but just missed it and it fell back a couple
points and is now up 3 for the day. I'm not sure if this is a good gap
or something to be worried about, yet.

I also picked up a small stake in AOB this morning. So unless something
sells out, I'm fully invested right now.

scaling out

So I've read a lot about scaling out of stocks lately. I already
started implementing it. One site I read recommended scaling out of 1/4
of your stock each time it reached a profit level. As an example, they
gave 6%, 18%, and 32%, and letting the last 1/4 ride. That might be
okay if you had large positions, but I think for my account, the
commissions would eat me up if I split it into that many trades.

Instead, I've decided to scale out 1/2 of my shares if I reach a 25%
profit point. As I get bigger positions, I might split it more, but I
figure for me being a newbie, and this being a sideways market, it's a
good way to lock in some profits, but not decrease my winners too much.

I already took profits in AP this way. Also, I got completely out of
ERS on a down day last week, for 25%. Of course, today it's up $5 and I
wish I was still in.

I've also decided to not do scaling in. I was watching maui picks and
buying some test lots of them, then buying more if they went up 3%.
Then I thought maybe I'd just wait and buy in if it went up 3%. I did
that with JOBS, but it turned out to be too far away from the buy point,
and I got shaken out today.

So I do have a couple of remaining test buys in DIL and TBBK. But I've
also done significant buys of KCS and USB.