Not me. The rot continues. It's been a damn awful week, despite the fact that the market presented me with some fantastic opportunities. I should have made some easy money; instead, I contrived somehow to lose out.

Gyrations in the oil price saw me stopped out of my short position. I had - very stupidly - decided to tighten my stop loss order to just above the February high (it was originally just above $60, a short distance away). What happened?

The price hit my stop before almost immediately reversing.

I'm not sure what possessed me to alter my original order. (If I'd left it alone, I'd be in profit now. ) I think I'd convinced myself that the position was doomed anyway and that the prudent thing to do would be to reduce the loss - even if the saving was insigni"cant. Cutting losses is all very well, but you have to give your trade a degree of wiggle room.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

I closed out my short position in Apple at a small loss. The tiny loss didn't bother me, but it was frustrating to watch the price sink a further $2 over the coming hours.

Still, I wasn't to know that at the time. Closing the position made sense, so I didn't waste time on any futile post mortems.

Looking forward, Apple's shortterm trend remains downward.

Although the stock has torn me to ribbons over the past few weeks, I'm still tempted to get short again on any weak rise. At the moment, the stock is being contained by its 20day moving average, with the 50day MA just a short distance away.

Until the stock manages to close above these levels, the path of least resistance would appear to be down.

Monday saw me short Elan at $13.65. Look at a chart and you'll see that Elan's 50-day moving average has rebuffed the stock time and time again over the past six months. My timing was immaculate and the price dropped away.

However, after discovering that Biogen, Elan's partner in the manufacture of MS drug Tysabri, was due to report earnings on Thursday, I closed out the position (the price had crept back up, making the trade a disappointing break-even).

Biogen would be providing critical updates on sales of the drug and any upside surprises would likely see the Elan share price jump. The shares have shown signs of life over the past few weeks, leading me to conclude that smart money was expecting the Tysabri news to be positive. Anyway, I rarely take positions in advance of earnings and didn't want to be short going into an event that could potentially catalyse the share price.

I'm still long eBay. Last week's upmove stalled at $33.80, a resistance zone I've referred to over the past few weeks. After dropping a dollar, eBay joined in the Nasdaq party on Wednesday and is nearing this critical zone once more. I took profits on half this position and am moving my stop up to protect my remaining ones. The stock is technically overbought so a few days of sideways movement underneath $34 would be a healthy thing, providing a base for a breakout attempt above $34.

So what went so badly wrong last week? Missed opportunities - lots of them.

I was eyeing up Amazon on Monday and had a chance to buy at $38.50. The stock popped $2 over the following days but I wasn't there to enjoy it. Didn't pull the trigger.

I was on the verge of buying Research in Motion at $132.50 on Tuesday, a low risk entry point that would have yielded a $5 gain within 24 hours. Didn't pull the trigger.

Tuesday also presented me with an ideal opportunity to buy Cisco, a strongly up-trending stock that has pulled back over the past week.

Though the subsequent price rise has been more modest than the aforementioned stocks, I'm still kicking myself because this was a real 'bread and butter' set-up, the kind I usually take with my eyes closed. Didn't pull the trigger. I could go on but you get the picture. From monkey to chicken, I've left a lot of money on the table last week.

Some traders suffer their biggest losses shortly after netting their biggest gains. Cockiness gets the better of them and the market punishes their carelessness and hubris.

It's not a vice I suffer from. No, my biggest failing as a trader is that a period of losses knocks my confidence, in the process making me jumpy and nervy. I have no doubt that I would have taken the aforementioned trades a month ago, when I was flying high after a succession of winning trades.

Of course, it could be worse. The biggest mistake a trader can make is to try and 'get back' money lost.

Thinking of the money rather than the trade, the emotional, stressedout trader forces trades and increases his bet size, almost invariably exacerbating the initial problem.

My advice to such traders is to bet smaller, not larger. That's what I plan to do, at least until I get my rhythm back. I'm lowering my maximum loss per trade to Euro700 (from Euro800). I may opt for smaller bets still. Losing streaks are an unfortunate fact of trading life. I'm hoping that mine is nearing its end.