A trader is only as good as the stocks that they are trading. Recently, a bunch of guys on our desk have made money trading CHK and HK. They were making nice chops every day. Sometimes its hard to let go of stock that you have been consistently making money in. But it is essential for this job to recognize when a stock may be less “In Play” and find a stock that is better to trade on a particular day. I think some of the young guys on the Desk suffered today as they weren’t where the easy money was.

Today was about being in the financials. The first two signs that made this apparent were the large gap down in FNM and LEH opening below $20 (previous low from March bottom in the market). There was a ton of opportunity out there. Nice selloff in the AM, then a rally, another selloff and then a rally for a few of the financials into the close. That type of intraday volatility is what a day trader thrives on.

Looking at my numbers at the end of the day 95% of my trading volume today was focused on financial stocks (as seen in the screenshot). That is why I had a pretty good day. But the truth is that for the size and level of risk that I usually take on during the trading day my results were below where they should have been. So I have been looking at charts for the past hour trying to find great entry points for tomorrow so I can maybe squeeze an extra couple of k out of the market next time 🙂