I’m hoping the results for February aren’t a prediction of the future. They shouldn’t be, as it was only a partial month and we ran into many problems.

Commissions are a drag. We paid about $300 or 3% for the month. We also have a charge of $100 for data feeds. So this brings our total down from the start of $10,000 to about $9,023.28. We’re down 10% in February.
The ATS made 31 trades and lost a total of 1.91R for an expectancy of -0.06. It made money on 41.94% of its trades.
Everything was going pretty well until the last 13 trades of the month, where we were stopped out of 10 of these for a loss of 7.35R or $1,421.24 (before commission).
Biggest winner: 2.32R, biggest loser: -1.24R
We have officially started off on the wrong foot.

Ouch. Today sucked. I even sent an instant message to my friend this morning, warning him that I thought there was a chance we would get chopped up today. We did.
The ATS made four trades and was stopped out of all of them. I watched the trades go through and none of them went our way for even a minute. We were always in the hole.
Today also sucked because some of the things we thought we had fixed came back - like orders for the wrong number of shares. And the damn computer that the damn thing is on is now acting unstable. Damn it.
The real problem is not losing today. Honestly I expect days like this. The real problem is not profiting like we should have yesterday. In order for this system to work, it needs to work - it can’t reject orders and it can’t crash.
One thing that is great about an ATS, though, is that your ego is not nearly as involved as with trading on your own. At least for me. The ATS lost money today, but whatever - I didn’t lose money. The computer did. Now if I had traded as poorly as the ATS today, it would have hurt a lot more. I guess I would feel more responsible or something.
Sure, there are a lot of subtle advantages a human trader has over a computer today. But I see a lot of potential with using a program to trade. It more clearly separates the ego from one day’s results. It also is consistent - and this gives you a much more clear understanding of how the system works and how well it performs. And what to tweak.
I’ll post February results for the ATS later tonight.

“It is one of the great paradoxes of the stock market that what seems too high usually goes higher and what seems too low usually goes lower.” - William O’Neil

– Click here for today’s full list –

“It is one of the great paradoxes of the stock market that what seems too high usually goes higher and what seems too low usually goes lower.” - William O’Neil

– Click here for today’s full list –

I’m following Richard’s lead and putting my twitter feed on the left sidebar of this page and plan to update it during the trading day with things that I’m looking at and thinking about.

Good morning, my name is the chartist formerly known as Ugly, and I am a loser. I have it in me to do serious financial damage to my account.

Dear Diary,
This ought to be interesting - I’m on the edge of my seat.
I’m surprised the futures are up this morning.
The ATS already crashed once this morning. That’s not a good sign. I think it may be the display adapter, so I reinstalled the driver.
Check out the WSJ article about the glitch yesterday:

At one post on the floor, traders resorted to writing buy and sell orders on a dry-erase board. Most of the letters next to the stock symbols said “S,” for “sell.”

“Go manual if you can,” said Art Cashin, a longtime floor broker for UBS, to traders at about 4 p.m. “Take paper if you have to.”

This part annoys me though:

Mr. Rutigliano reflected the frustration floor traders are feeling these days, as their role becomes diminished by the electronic age. “We were able to revert to a manual process that never breaks down,” he said.

A manual process - whatever. I think the reason they had problems is because they are only now switching away from that antiquated manual process. And the reason they took so long and are resisting the change is because the manual process allows them more opportunity to manually make more money.

Good luck - let’s finish the month strong.

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This is CNBC’s live coverage of the “air pocket” that tradermike posted about today:

Via bullnotbull.

“It is one of the great paradoxes of the stock market that what seems too high usually goes higher and what seems too low usually goes lower.” - William O’Neil

– Click here for today’s full list –

“It is one of the great paradoxes of the stock market that what seems too high usually goes higher and what seems too low usually goes lower.” - William O’Neil

– Click here for today’s full list –

Since day trading is a lot about recognizing the patterns in charts, I have decided to post a chart every day that would have resulted in a profitable dummy trade. I will post these in the dummy-a-day category which you can simply click to review for practice. The chart will be displayed as it looked when the trade should have been executed, and when you move your mouse over the image, it will show how the trade would have resulted.
Plenty of good examples today - here is one that I got, AKAM:

If you shorted AKAM when it broke below its 10:30 candle at $53.88 with a stop above it at $54.34, you would only risk 46 cents. Waiting to cover until the end of the day would have given you about 246 cents for every share you were short, or over 5 times your risk.