The Starting Balance of Trading Account

This is the first post of this blog. The “Stock Traders Blog”. The purpose of writing this blog is to keep track of how I did on my trading and help me to keep myself in discipline. I choose today’s account balance as the starting balance. $30,392.60

I did a couple trades today. I shorted 1000 shares of AMD (advance micro device) and covered it later. Bought 500 shares of USB (US Bank Corp) and sold it later. I made a small profit on both trades and the account balance is up $299.77 from yesterday. The biggest market event today was the April retail sales report. It was lower than expected. Also news came out that April foreclosure was up 32% percent. Because of the bad news Dow was down 2.18% at 8,284.89 and Nasdaq was down 3.01% at 1,664.19

I chose to short AMD because AMD was trading at this year’s highest price. It went up a lot these couple days because the news that Intel was fined 1.4 billion in Europe. Bad news for Intel is good news for AMD. But I think it is too good to be true. All though AMD may improve its competitiveness in Europe going forward the big run up for AMD may not be justified. I will be watching out for more shorting opportunity on AMD.

USB went down to $17.05 today. I got in at $17.16. USB later announced that they were able to repay TRAP within weeks and price went back up to $17.65 and then pull back. I sold it kind of late at $17.40. USB share was under pressure after its stock offering at $18. I personally believe USB ($17.40 close) is a better bet then WFC (Wells Fargo 24.20) even though Warren Buffet recommended Wells Fargo. I think the effect of Warren Buffet’s recommendation will continue to subside.

I feel the possibility of the bank sector going down is higher than going up at this moment. As such I don’t want to keep long position over night for banks. I was lucky that I sold 2000 shares of long position on USB yesterday at $17.56 after market at a small lost.

Account Balance Change: +299.77

On June 4th, 2009. I reset my account balance to $30,000 by transfering out a small amount of gain in order to have a fresh start. This action was intended to help me back to my disciplines and forget about the big lost in the past. See Searching for Balance and Trying to Get Back to Discipline Following Trading Guidelines