In my weekly ETF newsletter (only $60 to year-end 2009 or $20 for a month), I keep track of the trends and write a brief (200 word) explanation of changes made to the portfolio. If you want to read 10,000 words about what tribal strife in Nigeria combined with backdoor deals between Chinese real estate developers and state-owned banks means for the markets, don’t come to me. I like to keep it simple, stupid.

I am two people away from reaching the lofty 200 subscriber mark, so to encourage green tea lovers to sign up today, I will send 50 grams of outstanding Dragon Well tea to the lucky 200th subscriber in thanks. ACT NOW! :-)

Here are the details of the borrowers my subscribers and I are supporting through Wokai, a microfinance outfit in China.

Recall the original idea was to get short on the 19th with a swing trading target of 13.26 - 12.85. Really skillful day traders could have gotten short as high as 15.45. Every one of the free trading ideas I post on Twitter is conceptually sound (i.e. good in theory), but the tricky bit is managing the trade once it’s open.

When I day traded, I almost always went flat at the end of the day so I didn’t have to worry about managing my mental state over several days. With these swing trades, the best thing I can come up with is to exit part of the position on a reversal of the intraday volatility stop and carry the rest with a stop while waiting for the swing trading target zone. This way you satisfy both your greed and your fear, keeping your mental balance.

Following this thinking, with UNG you would have exited part of the trade at 14.65 on the intraday volatility reversal. Then the question becomes how to handle the balance of the position. The greediest way would be go breakeven and wait for the swing trading target to be reached. This would require a lot of patience, but would be the most rewarding. The scaredy-cat way to handle it would be to continue to trail some kind of stop on the balance, and as you can see from the hourly chart below, probably a ton of skittish shorts covered on the 25th and 26th.

When your initial stop is only 15 cents, every 1.50 you leave on the table is another 10-bagger. That’s why it’s probably best to stay at breakeven on the balance of your position and hang in there patiently. Thoughts from the gallery?

SRCL is a thin dog, I hate that. Nevertheless you can see that it broke hard from the get-go, rallied up to “resistance,” put in some good Dummy bars allowing you to get short, and the rest is history. The swing trading target is 48.54 - 48.10, which is way down there. How you manage the exit is key. You have to balance greed and fear, which is the problem traders face every day and why your mental health is precarious — just ask any old burnout. (You used to be able to find them, always hogging the quote terminals, in discount brokerage branch offices.)

Greediest thing you could do is hold out for the big swing target while sitting with a breakeven stop. Most fearful thing you could do is exit all on a reversal of the intraday volatility stop. A balance between fear and greed: exit part of position on volatility stop reversal (mollifying your fears), carry balance with breakeven stop and an eye on the big target (mollifying your greed).

If you want to thank me for these occasionally great and always free ideas, just subscribe to my weekly ETF newsletter (which has absolutely nothing to do with day trading).

I’ve sorted the table by percentage total return (year-to-date). India at the top, NatGas at the bottom. Yes, my subscribers are long India and short (or avoiding) NatGas, obviously.

Subscribe to my weekly ETF newsletter today, it’s only $60 to year-end 2009 (or $20 for a month).

That said, back in March I was watching the trend in the FXI (iShares FTSE/Xinhua China 25 Index) and saw it reverse. I told subscribers to buy the FXI at $27.24 (time-stamped, in black and white, just ask for a copy of the letter) and the rest is history. There are econobloggers who can weave wonderful, statistically-rich, persuasive posts about China week after week, but you’ll never make a dime reading those guys.

I put my own money behind every idea in the newsletter unlike 99.9% of the gurus out there. Give my newsletter a try, it’s only $60 to year-end 2009 (or $20 for a month). I’m raising prices in calender 2010 to $200 a year.

Here are the details of the borrowers my subscribers and I are supporting through Wokai, a microfinance outfit in China.

UNG popped up open and I would have closed the balance of the short at 14.42. The trade was a 5-10 bagger (reward was 5-10 times initial risk) depending on how you handled it. Pretty good for a free idea.

The 15.45 entry on Friday the 19th had a super-tight ten to fifteen cent initial stop which would allow those who equal-dollar-size their risk to take a very large position. Following my newest trade management idea, which is to take partial profits on a reversal of the intraday volatility stop, part of the short was covered on Monday the 22nd around 14.65.

The balance of the position is carried with the larger time-frame target in mind and a looser trailing stop, which was 14.62 on Tuesday and is now 14.42 on Wednesday. If it tanks again on Thursday, then Wednesday’s level of 14.10 would be the newest stop level.

For the many people who took this trade, I’d love to hear how you’re handling the exit, but everyone is silent except for the redoubtable @keithshepard (who is already a subscriber). If you want to thank me for these occasionally great and always free ideas, just subscribe to my weekly ETF newsletter.

UPDATE: AXP was a loser. Dummy spot was right below two day resistance which is probably a dumb place to buy (he says with 20-20 hindsight). In any event, it looks like around a 50 cent loss for your efforts. If you equal-dollar size your risk, then you lost “one unit” on the day.

Final UPDATE: AXP ran higher today given a very favorable broad market tailwind. Don’t confuse being smart with being on the right side of the day’s trend. You can watch the StockTwits stream to see longs crowing about their brilliance or shorts writhing in pain, but it doesn’t mean anything. Risk management is what it’s all about and you never want to spit in the wind.

My dozen followers know that I have a good eye (from long experience) for sound set-ups, but the really hard part is managing the trade once it’s taken and that’s what I’m hashing out in these posts. I’m leaning more and more to the idea of taking partial profits based on the intraday volatility stop and holding the balance with a breakeven or looser stop while keeping the target (based on the daily time frame) in the back of my mind.

T was strong out of the gate and gave a good Dummy spot above the 10 AM bar. Maximum risk was around 20-25 cents and the target is up above $25 so the risk reward was good. Interested to hear how people are trailing the stop. My own volatility stop trailed up to 24.54 at day’s end. So no partial profits taken yet and the larger time frame target still in mind.

Netflix (NFLX) was hard because it gapped down and broke so fast on Monday morning. I don’t see a good entry so I’m very interested to hear how people entered it and where they placed their initial stop and how they’re managing the trade since then. The swing trading target is *way* below so I’m not sure how much room to give this one to run. I personally would have given the trade a miss since I don’t see a really good way to enter it other than blindly shorting on Monday morning with a stop up above 42 somewhere (not my style).

Lastly UNG traded lower on Tuesday but once again the Trender flipped late in the day as the volatility on this one diminishes to nothing. If I were still holding any of this after taking partial profits on the late Monday reversal, I guess I’d trail above 14.62 or so while keeping that 13ish target in mind.

If you made good money on any of these *free* trading ideas, your conscience dictates that you subscribe to my weekly ETF newsletter. :-)