Trade review 2-17-10

This post needs to be called: "should I fire my broker?"

I tried to sell some paper plays I have been holding, but Interactive Brokers, whose lame Trader Workstation (TWS) which is the shell program used to simulate trades in paper trading accounts, consistently fails to exit (and sometimes to enter!) even using market orders (!) at critical times, like during periods of high volume and volatility, like the open of the trading session.

The result is TSHO, which I have been holding for dump of decent size, finally tanked big intraday. I tried to buy and cover, even using a market order. No dice. Then many minutes later, it triggered, cutting my huge gain into pennies of banked coin!

I tried to sell a risky overnight long of ISPI very near the open for a decent gain, and watched it all turn into a LOSS (!) when it refused even a market order, finally executing far too late.

On PIR, a somewhat risky (hence papered) play, where I bought a huge pullback of a previous day breakout to re-enter the trade despite being late to the party, I improved my impatience problems noted in two other recent posts, by refusing to exit prematurely when I entered too soon @ 6.16 after seeing a big volume green stick on a 5 minute chart following a hammer print, wrongly believing the tanking was over. The stock basicially held 6 support impishly and it rose back up slowly, and I put in a sell order of my long entry at a decent gain. Once again, IB failed me and I watched for ages in horror as it failed to sell the shares until it triggered for a small loss!

IB's paper trading account is totally unrealistic because of these consistent failures, FYI.

The conclusion is I think I am going to stop using IB for paper trades, though their REAL money orders have decent fills and timely executions. I will try to use Think or Swim's SIM for papering, but I have yet to fund it so the quotes are delayed, but I am working on that, too.

The trouble is all my money is tied up in IB to permit pattern day trading ability, it must have over 25K in it at all times. Addionally, I must save enough money up to fund several brokers to ensure better short sale borrows, and this is going to take some time so I will be doing a lot more paper than real at this point.

I almost bit on a real money play breakout of UCTT, which had a beautiful consolidation for 90 minutes near the highs, then took off modestly near the close, which I alerted another trader on who banked coin. The play set up is outlined in some detail in Toni Turner's day trading book of about 10 years ago.

I nailed several set ups noted from last night's calls, helping people in the chatroom moderated by Reaper. I hope to do the same tomorrow!

SLD    200    ISPI    Stock    0.2350    USD    SMART    08:38:58        1.00
BOT    200    PIR    Stock    6.1600    USD    NYSE    09:35:25        1.00
BOT    100    TSHO    Stock    1.42    USD    SMART    12:31:50        1.00
SLD    200    PIR    Stock    6.1400    USD    NYSE    12:36:02        1.00


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