Nothing clouds your judgment like losses. The urge to claw back some money is very strong. Once you find yourself in a winning position, you then feel compelled to make away like a nervous bandit, taking small profits when you should be letting them run. In other words, you force trades, entering when the odds aren't really on your side. The trade either goes against you and you say goodbye to your money, or you exit at the first hint of a profit. It's a recipe for disaster, which is why I opted to take a small break for myself.

I'm glad I did so. Lord knows what I'd have done to my account if I hadn't.

Unfortunately, I'm still jittery and unable to get into any kind of trading rhythm at all. I've been unable to find decent trading opportunities. The fact that earnings season has begun does not help matters . . . if a stock presents a good technical set-up but is reporting earnings a day or two later, I pass on the trade.

Technicals count for nothing in the event of an earnings shocker.

Anyway, I was disciplined enough not to enter a trade for the sake of it. My only trade has been a long bet on the Dow, where I somehow managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

This was a real horror trade. I can't recall when I last felt so disgusted (last week, now that I think about it).

I went long near the closing bell on Tuesday. It had been a down day but I was confident that a bounce was imminent. After giving up 300 points or so in the preceding days, the index was coming into its 20day average, which seemed a natural place for longs to load up and shorts to take profits.

Strong earnings from a whole host of companies . . . Intel, Yahoo! , Coca-Cola and JPMorgan Chase, to name but a few . . . saw the market open strong the next morning.

Hallelujah! I was in need of some good news and this was it.

I left my computer screen for a couple of hours and was irked, to say the least, to find that the market had reversed almost 250 points and the Dow was now deeply in the red. What had happened?

Not a lot as far as I could see.

Briefing. com's lunchtime report said that "the inability to hold the early gainsf has fostered a disappointment trade that carried the market to its worst levels of the day".

No-one was more disappointed than me. Disappointment turned to disgust when I saw my account balance At first I thought there was some kind of mistake. How the hell could I be down that much? It made no sense . . . after all, I had raised my stop loss order to break even.

Or had I? I got that tickly sensation in my stomach, the kind you get when you know you've cocked-up and bad news is about to be confirmed.

I'd forgotten to raise my initial stop.

I was dumbstruck. This was a first. When ever a decent profit comes my way, I bring the stop up to or near break even. Never let a profit turn into a loss, as the cliche puts it. I had intended to raise it; in fact, hours earlier, I can even recall thinking, 'Worst case scenario, I'm out at break even'.

This was the pits. It was bad enough that the market had turned inexplicably and that my initial profits were gone. But to end up losing money on the trade - words fail me. Just to rub things in, I'd been stopped out near the low of the day and the market rallied 125 points in the final two hours of trading.

That little disaster was my only new trade this week. I was stopped out of my old position in the Dow at the end of the previous week . . . a profitable trade, just not as profitable as it might have been.

When I look back on the last two months, I see a rotten mixture of bad trading and bad luck. I would categorise this week's Dow trade as falling into the latter category . . . sure, I messed up, but it was a onein-a-million type error rather than a loss occasioned by rash actions.

Getting stopped out of Research in Motion in mid-August, just prior to it enjoying a run-up of almost 100%, was also pretty lousy luck. Two months on and I still feel sick when I think of that trade.

For what it's worth, I don't see this week's minor correction morphing into anything more sinister, at least not yet. The momentum favourites of this bull market . . . Apple, Research in Motion, Google, NVIDIA . . . are still looking healthy. Apple and Nvidia bought hit new highs on Wednesday. Research in Motion and Google are threatening their recent all-time highs. This is not bear market action.

The strength in the above names is testimony to just how strong the Nasdaq has been recently. All indices have been strong since the mid-August bottom but the Nasdaq has really led the way, racing ahead by 20% during that time.

It was always likely to do so.

After all, the whole subprime fiasco was a crisis in the financial sector.

Nasdaq companies were pretty much immune from its effects but were dragged down nevertheless.

If I had any cop on, I'd have been stocking up when the sector went on sale.

No point dwelling on that though, just as pining over Research in Motion is utterly futile. This is a truly lousy spell I'm going through, my worst since this column began.

All I can do is knuckle down and get through it.

Weekly gain/loss:
- 1200
Overall balance: 45,500