Jan 25 - Jan 29 completed trades

Let me start this weekly review by apologizing to the regular readers for not writing a daily review yesterday. I had a busy schedule later in the day which didn't allow me the time to right one.

As I wrote in my Thursday's evening post, I expected a bounce in the market and I had pointed that the bounce should be taken as an opportunity to get out of existing longs and start new shorts. And I was exactly right!! Unfortunately, I didnt do such a good job of following my own advice. If you go through my last week's posts, I had a very good track record in calling the markets this week but hardly made any money out of it. I believe that's all part of the lack of confidence when you are trying to come out of a slump. But more on that in a special post tomorrow - Confessions of a recovering trader.

I got out of BA at around breakeven, not liking how it was behaving. A decision based on watching the tape, rather than reading the charts. It turned out the decision was the right one. But then I made the mistake of trying to call the bottom in SWC by entering a small position it  around 10.32, a position I still hold.

Coming back, to the weekly review of the completed trades. As I had said before the week began, the plan was to trade small and trade less this week and I am glad I stuck to it for the most part, though I could have done a better job. As you can see in the table below, I had a very cautious approach this week, something I will discuss the advantage and disadvantage of in the forthcoming post that I mentioned earlier.

4 profit, 0 losses - +1.3%

Average profit - + 0.325%

Average loss - N.A.

Total account down 3.2% YTD

Open Positions: NEP, AUY, SWC (Heavy losses in NEP being responsible for most of the monthly losses but am very confident about this position. AUY and SWC are too small to impact the account. Will get out of them Monday, so they will be reported in next week's trades.)

Note:

1) The table shows only completed trades of the week. The positions that are still open will be accounted for in the week that I close them.
2) The YTD calculation includes the open positions. I just take my account value at end of Friday and calculate it. So, it also includes commissions which do matter a lot to a small account like mine.

Which other blog reports results after commissions? :)