Swing Trading System Day 3: Turning a Winner into a Loser

One of the first lessons in stock trading is never to turn a winner into a loser and that is exactly what happened on the third day of my swing trading system! I managed to turn my biggest winning stock as of Thursday (PNR) into a stock that hit the stop loss for 1% capital loss. Things could have been worse if I hadn’t set a tight stop loss exactly above the resistance level of the trading range, as the stock gained 4% at some point during Friday’s trading session and I was short since I began testing this trading system!

I also traded out Marriot’s stock with a loss holding MAR shares for just one day. The trend line was broken, support level failed and I saved about $15 comparing to my usual risk per trade ($100) by trading less than optimum shares and setting a stop loss just one cent below the most recent low.

Those two completed trades brought the total of completed trades since the start of the swing trading system up to 4 for a total loss of about $350, since I traded out NCT and TSM the other day.

I’m still long 43 stocks and short 9 stocks. BAC, MS and X stocks are still my most profitable trades at this time, while DCT and HERO are the worst performers of my stock portfolio. Both of them are trading very close to key support or resistance levels where I have set the stop loss orders. Fortunately the unrealized profit and loss of the portfolio is up $928 on Friday’s close, therefore the stock trading system shows a positive ROI until now.

New stocks were added during Friday’s session.

I shorted DNKN, IGT and DECK and I’m long NXPI, LPHI, MTL and FLEX. Quite a few of the trades are now risk-free, as the stop loss orders have been moved up (or down for short-sold stocks) at breakeven level, such as Vodafone and SPF.