I haven’t been posting here, but it’s only because I’m watching the market through tear and blood soaked eyes. Though my account balance has been less than it is today, it is within a bill or two from it’s bottom, so you aren’t missing much. I’m not sure where the market is headed but I do know that if it’s going down, I need Chitty to get there before OE on the 16th.

I’m just tired. It’s a mental exhaustion that just won’t go away no matter how much I sleep. In order to avoid the market and its toll on my account, I’ve been keeping myself really busy with work and consulting, but it’s really just a useless distraction that isn’t working like I had hoped. Hope.. that’s my problem. Never, never, never should a trader count on hope.

I’m not much in the mood to discuss what a day this was for me. I’m just going to say that it’s all because of karma. I’m sure that if I just left the world around me untouched with anything nice or good I wouldn’t be punished for it. Maybe this is a sign that it’s time for me to stop trading?

Another day, same thing for me. Watching the stock market move up and down without anything really panning out for my positions. After hours right now I got to see AAPL jump to the $170 area before coming back down to $162 and now back to $164. I’m not sure where it will end, but it will likely make some people happy and others pissed. As for Chitty, I’m not happy or pissed, yet.

Could be worse. I could have lost all money in Chitty, even though it will be close to that. Bummer.. I’m not much in the mood to talk about it. It’s a little painful, knowing that I’m right in some ways but not in the ways that count. Since work has been eating into my time a little more each day, there’s less chance for me to think about my surmounting losses and lessening chance of making money in options. Failure?

Chitty came down a little bit. I’m still no better off than I was last week for my currect positions or account value. I got some interesting comments on my complete failure last week which actually should have ended with me admitting to losing thousands of dollars, but instead I used a cop out and didn’t report my losses to the VO. Ya, its sort of like cheating, but that’s allowed here.

sigh    I’m not sure what to say, not sure what to write. I would go about defending my thoughts on the stock, but that’s not going to help anyone (and by anyone I mean me). I made an error the other day, when I had the opportunity to sell at a profit or nearly breakeven between my Apr08 and May08 puts. I didn’t take advantage of that opportunity and today I lost a lot of money, both in realized and unrealized form. This post isn’t going to be filled with humor and wit, it will be filled with stats and facts and figures, along with some clear reasoning why Citigroup shouldn’t be at $25+ a share. This is all to help me relax and convince myself that my reasoning is correct even if my stock trading is not.

Tomorrow morning will be the time. I’m either going to win or lose on the river tomorrow morning when earnings are announced. It’s sort of exciting and sort of not. I think that if I only had the money in my account left to my name, it would be more exciting. With most days the Chitty stock goes in the general direction of the market, with earnings though it’s not going to matter that GOOG made another $3 trillions dollars this quarter.

Today wasn’t too good for the bears. I don’t know about how the bulls did, probably fantabulous. There were a few good snippets of news and it today’s market, anything not screaming utter failure makes for the a bounce and upward arc. I’m sure that Chitty reporting on Friday will cause an upswing too, just because they didn’t refuse to report earnings.

Time to make a guess at tomorrow’s future, that’s how people make money in the stock market. Guessing. Sure, you can whip out dozens or hundreds of charts and start trying to convince other’s that you know what direction a stock is going in, and barring news that is contrary to your directional guess you might be right. But chances are that you will only be right for a short period of time. I know, because I’m like you.