This quiet market and a little bit of quiet at the office today has given me a few minutes to highlight an aspect of trading that rarely gets looked at, intraday position management.  The screen shot below shows the screen that I look at throughout the day to get a feeling for where my positions are relative to the market action.  I do not look at my portfolio page unless I’m making a trade, having the cumulative amount of money and P&L for each position in front of your face all the time isn’t healthy, it can effect your operation of each position in a negative way, and your whole portfolio as you focus too much on the cumulative amount of money you are making or losing instead of managing each position.

These are the positions I currently hold in the momentum book.  The important thing I want to share with you here is the “Range” category at the far right.  I use this little tool to give me a quick glance at which stocks I need to be paying attention to on an intraday basis for breakout and breakdowns.  Stocks breaking out of their intra day ranges will show up with large green bars, stocks breaking down will show up with large red bars.  I use this on my watchlists as well to get a quick view of what’s moving.  this is an Interactive Brokers feature.

As I said earlier, don’t keep your P&L sheet in front of your face all day, it’s not healthy.  Use the range bars, they are a good tool to get a quick look at which positions you need to be giving attention to.