Attachment. Wed Feb 3

I was quite irritated when trading had finished yesterday because I knew I had become wedded to the bearish view on stocks so that I talked myself out of taking a perfectly good trade in Fortescue. It's up at 490 now after half an hour and if I was long I'd be getting out of at least half as it was a countertrend trade. The only trade I have done is to cut my half position in Qan for a 600 dollar loss as it broke the resistance at 290.
I wonder if it's the hardest trick to learn with trading - detachment - I'd looked at 60 minute charts for the Dow Jones and the Xjo at the end of the day and they both looked set for another kick up but I was still looking for bearish trades like the Qantas one. A trading buddy of mine has been working on automation for a long time as his solution to the problem of personal bias but I still prefer to trade manually. Despite the frustrations and perhaps because of the frustrations trading is as much a vehicle for self discovery as it is for profit and that's probably the enduring appeal. I've known enough traders who've made more than enough to retire on but there's no way they're going to stop.
As things stand, the second day up in a countertrend rally should be more choppy. We've had an early pullback from a strong open and we might be heading for a midday high and an afternoon sell off. Up 43 points at 10.46am.

12.30 The market has edged back since the open so it may be that the high was early. Chinese markets are just opening so if they're strong they could drag us up. Japan is flat.

1.27 The market is only up 19 points now and I'm thinking about short positions in a couple of stocks where the first retracement might have gone far enough. The best one might be Transfield which is trending down and has reversed intraday after touching 401 this morning.

3.05 Still haven't put on any new trades apart from some intraday stuff. I'm leaning towards Fortescue as a short now as I was looking for a rally toward 500 and it reached 498 earlier on. At the moment the market has got a second wind and we're shaping up to finish on our highs so if I deal it could well be just a portion into the match with the plan of completing the trade tomorrow.

4.12 Shorted 6500 Tse, a half position, at 389. Didn't quite wait till the close as it wasn't participating in the rally to any great extent but it blipped to 392 in the match so going early cost me a few cents. My existing featured positions are shorts in Cey and Ipl. Cey pushed towards my stop level early but eased later to finish up 3 on the day at 372. Ipl also squeezed up to 343. I'm hoping that the market is, indeed, in a retracement rally and that it's close to having run its course because I could have had tighter stops on these two.
The ASX 200 finished with a gain of nearly 43 points, 9 points away from the early high.