Intraday Idiot

I buy 5 options on a head fake. Then I sell at a low. And buy again as it rises, and sell even lower. Racked up $100 in new losses for the new year to stand at -$1130 all time. What an idiot.

I have absolutely no clue what I'm doing.

So I make a second trade with puts...this time although I miss the ball I made $10. Don't think I'm going to be doing any more of this today, though. So I'm $1120 in the hole. Great.

I think part of my problem was I was looking at the 1 day minute chart...much better to look at the 2 day to put things in perspective.

Wow. Like OMG. I get in again. I suffer through lots of emotional pain, see my puts double at one time...hold one, then looks like the down trend broken and get in calls. And then it goes down, but market consolidating. Now I lost another $2 overall.Take it to -$92 for the day! WOWOWOWOW. If I had held on to the puts or sold when I had made bank I would have been in great shape. I guess strong downtrends don't evaporate right away. That trade was WINNING big!

And I miss lots of $ in profit throughout the day and wind up with a $100 loss. GREAT. I am so bummed. Like SERIOUSLY disappointed.

Now its rising like I thought...9:06 AM

Obviously in a range....so...I will sell my first real iron butterfly spread...finally got it sold at 2055 on spx with 15 pt wings. Only doing this because options expire today so time decay will be intense especially since it's nearly 1:00 at the markets. Max loss: 3000-1340= 1660. Max gain: $1340.

Yeah, finally brought out the big guns. Hopefully they're not shot out of my hands.

I have to go to a luncheon today. I do want to buy this spread back by 3:20 market time at the latest. My quandary now is if I'm driving to the luncheon I can't do anything if the market really moves. As long as I can attend to the market I will not realize my max loss. I can buy back the side that's in trouble, and when the trend looks like its changing sell that side again. Or just let the market go while the other side expires. I hope we don't get to that point. So far, so good. The market is trading in a tight range. I should probably place those paper trades I had planned to place before I became so distracted.

At least I'm erasing the day's loss right now. I certainly don't want to lose more so I'm afraid I'll bequick on the trigger. And I know I won't make the max gain.

I just can't stop watching. Market is trading on the lower end of the range. Lower end is the one in most danger, too. Still have support before positions would close at a loss, but this is getting close.

Mother came in the room and distracted me for 20 minutes...this contributed to what happened next.

Now the market broke through and I fumbled with the trade...tried to buy back my put spread before the market broke through because the direction was obvious but selected the wrong options because they were not ordered as I expected on my screen.

Oh great. Then I placed an order to buy back the spread and set the price too high. Now I paid as much as I can make from the entire trade to buy back that spread. And I still have a $3000 risk on the other side.

This did NOT work. Bad trade. I was about to cancel that order.

And the market moved back up to where I could have bought that spread back at a profit.

And all this right before my birthday on Saturday.

Seriously, as one friend told me, "Do more fucking paper trades." I will NEVER learn like this. Its just my paper account is delayed by 20 minutes and trading there just isn't very good.

It seems like my trouble mostly is I let my emotions get the best of me and therefore trade too much.

I got out. Now I'm 1,500 in the hole. I moved $2000 out of my trading account. So funded with $7000, current valuve 5,500