I was trading HPQ this morning on the good guidance they provided. I traded the stock pretty well in premarket and was able to build a pretty good cushion for the open. I normally do not trade this stock as it is too thick and doesn’t have enough volatility. Today however it was up almost $4 on the open and I had enough information from my trades in premarket so I felt I had a huge edge.

Oh boy was I wrong! The stock traded much much differently when the market opened. I started to make good money on the first couple of moves but quickly gave it all back. Not because I had lost my edge on the trades but just because the specialist or whoever had the big order flow was just being a clown. There is no other way to describe the big player on the stock without using profanity.

The stock had running every big nasty computer program this morning: buy the new low program, trapped program, drop to go higher program, lift to go lower program, etc. I felt that as a trader I had adapted to the bad trading and the games in the stock but that wasn’t enough.

So this brings me to the point of this entry. Sometimes as traders we need to make the executive decision of moving on. Pretty much accepting defeat, realizing that the guy running the show is too good and that there is no easy money in the stock. There’s is no need to prove to anybody that you can make money in XYZ. Just like Bella says: Always act in your own best interest. Ripping up money to try to prove that you are better than the guy running the show is definitely not doing so. There is always plenty of free money somewhere else. For me, the easy money wasn’t in HPQ today.

Looking at WFC, MDT and WFR in the close. Good luck with your trading.