The other day my mom said, “What have you been up to? I’m not getting much from your blog.” Someone else asked me, "What do you do all day?"

Since I lost my job I’ve mainly done one thing: follow the stock market. I am trying to learn how to trade stocks. Initially I thought I’d just choose some stocks for my portfolio. But then I began to see that this is not a buy-and-hold market. I don’t care what Suze Orman says.  You don’t buy and hold in a bear market. This is a trader’s market. And once I saw that, I decided that I would learn how to trade stocks while I’m out of a job.

So how’s that plan going? I have made a handful of trades with mixed results (read: mostly I lost money.) Jan & I are actually doing it together. So, I should say that we lost money. Over the Christmas holidays I talked to a couple of my cousins who have traded stocks—one of them with much success. I asked for their advice, which was this: 1) develop a system and stick to the system. In other words, when you trade, you do what your system tells you to do. Period. This will keep you from trading on emotion.  (This advice was from the successful trader.) 2) Trade on paper for at least a year.  (This advice was from the less successful trader.)

Right after Christmas J & I got to work on developing a system. We developed one and I back tested it. We don’t have a lot of fancy software that does all the back testing for you. So when I say I “back tested,” I mean I sat and stared at charts and graphs until I couldn’t see straight and plugged a lot of numbers into a calculator and scribbled my results into a spiral notebook. Not really all that scientific or sophisticated. The two of us were convinced that we had a decent system, one that would overall make money. However, we did some paper trades for a week following our system just to be sure. Then it was time to put the system to the test for real. I know Cousin #2 had the best of intentions when he said to paper trade for a year, but honestly, that seems like a huge waste of time.

It is SO easy to paper trade. Doing it for real, using real money, is very different. The few times I’ve traded for real I’ve felt sick to my stomach and lightheaded.  To a lesser extent, I’ve felt that way exiting the trade. This has led me to conclude that I am not cut out for this. That’s what I told Jan yesterday and she said, “That’s fine. Don’t stress yourself out; there’s no reason to do it if it causes you stress!”

So then today, I’m sitting around the house doing some stuff on the Internet. Not going to trade. Had no intention of trading. But of course I had CNBC on because I have CNBC on every day. I like watching CNBC. The market zigzagged today for the most part. But for me it’s like trying NOT to look at a car wreck; I just can’t NOT look. Anyway, at the end of the day close to the bell, I impulsively bought a stock. Now, when I say impulsively, I mean, that it fell in line with our system. We have a system and it has to do with a stock being oversold based on some technical indicators. Anyway, one of the stocks that I follow was TOTALLY meeting our criteria to buy so I just logged on to the trading account to buy the stock.

I felt dizzy and weak but pushed on anyway. After I’d placed the trade and my order was executed, I thought this feeling would subside, if not pass completely. But it didn’t; it got worse! I made the trade 15 minutes before the closing bell and so I had 15 minutes of TORTURE trying to decide should I get out? Should I sell? It’s not too late. I can sell right now and be even. The stock had moved higher in the 12 minutes I’d held it and with that small gain, I could pay the online brokerage fee and be totally even. And that’s what I did.

And now, several hours later, I’m sitting here in disbelief that I sold. I just looked at the candlestick chart again. It was SO SO stupid to have sold. I guarantee the stock is going higher tomorrow. I don’t say this because I think I’m a know-it-all. With the stock market obviously there are no guarantees. BUT. I have devoted almost all of my time to learning about stock trading since I lost my job in November. I mean, basically that is all I have done for the past 7 weeks. And I’m telling you that I know as sure as I am sitting here that tomorrow that stock is going higher than where I bought it. Stock trading is part science and part art. My intuition helps me with the "art" aspect. I'm just saying.

If I’m going to buy and sell stocks, I must learn to manage my fear. First, I guess I have to identify WHY I am fearful. I mean, you might assume it’s because I don’t want to lose money, but then again, it could be something else. For instance, it could be that I don’t want to be WRONG. And that would mean my ego is in control. Or maybe it’s that I don’t really want to be successful at trading stocks. But why would that be? Maybe deep down I think that trading stocks is a stupid thing to do. That it’s a stupid way to make money. I don’t know. These are all things I need to think about.