Just a trade

Given the increased "why the heck are you selling" messages, I wanted to quickly put out on a post to cover the concept of Trading Goals. In order to fully be prepared in a trade, it is important to have the goals defined for why you are doing the trade in the first place.

I have found it to be increasingly important when I am initiating a new day trade to ensure that I note if it is meant to be such: it is "just a trade". I would like to offer why this is so vital to mental preparation in stock trading in that this is meant to ensure that I keep emotions in check. You can not marry yourself to a stock. In fact, the importance of defining my goal for the trade is enhanced because I may have a position on the same stock in another account (like my LT account for instance) which is in place using a defined set of goals for my Long Term strategy.

A trade that I define as just a day trade will have a few simple goals which includes my time frame for executing the trade, expected targets, and may include a very short leash (tight stop).

Today I have scaled out of all my positions that I held over the weekend in my day trade account. The new positions I added today, AIG & UAL, I have scaled out during the day as I felt an afternoon fade was brewing.

My trading style and philosophies are not fool proof, but the inclusion of goals & discipline help to ensure that my trading performance remains profitable - whether I am long SBUX, whether I am short NFLX, or whether I find myself in all cash.