Denarii's Daughter - Update

Extracted from Katie's journal updates (I've omitted certain info...but you can find them when you go into the website):

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Friday, July 10, 2009 6:25 PM, CDT

Kat slept much of the afternoon and this evening, due to meds she is taking. She is drinking water and actually took a pill by mouth for the first time. We hope the nasal tube will be removed tomorrow. She really wants it out and we had to do a lot of fast talking to keep her from yanking on it.

The cervical collar was removed this afternoon, making her much more comfortable.

Around 6 p.m., Kat got out of bed for the first time since she arrived here. She sat in a chair for about 5 minutes, decided she wanted to lie down again, and hopped up and into the bed before we could even call the nurse.

As her health improves, our next concern is how she will manage when it's time to go home. And the hospital bills. She has no health insurance. I don't have to tell anyone how much this costing her...the hospital alone is $15K per day, and that doesn't even include the doctors.

Pray for Kat to have good healthy sleep tonight and an even better day tomorrow.

Saturday, July 11, 2009 4:19 PM, CDT

Kat's been sleeping most of the day; she ate a few bites of lunch but that's about it.

She complained of a bad headache in forehead area this afternoon, so she's on pain medication for that. Other than that, everything has been fine. Her blood pressure has been overall lower, so the meds are controlling that pretty well. She's been out of bed a few times, but isn't staying up much yet. Although, she did get pretty insistent about leaving this afternoon.

If you want to email Kat, there's a page on the hospital website where you can email her and a volunteer will print it and bring it to Kat to read. She can dictate a reply as well.

Please do send a card if you can spare a minute. Kat needs to know she has a lot of people wishing her well right now. Funny cards (not corny) are good.

The address is:

Kat Stanton
Neurosciences ICU
East Tower 9F
Room 18
SUNY Upstate Medical University Hospital
750 East Adams St.
Syracuse, NY 13210

We expect Kat to be in ICU a few more days at least, maybe to midweek. After that she goes to a regular Neuro unit and then we'll see.

Sunday, July 12, 2009 9:46 AM, CDT

Hi Everyone - Kat's taken a big step forward today - she was able to give herself a sponge bath and then sit in a chair. She really tried to talk us into letting her have a shower but as she still is getting some IV fluids that's not gonna happen.

Speech is still a bit disordered, but she's more oriented to where she is and what's happening. They changed her meds yesterday and her BP has normalized. She ate more food for breakfast (complaining how awful it was the whole time) than she did all day yesterday. Her boyfriend Ben is here today, which makes her a lot happier. We still have not located her eyeglasses, so she's wearing her aviator shades...it's SO Katie.

Doothy's suggestion is a good one, I hadn't thought of that. When I return to Milwaukee tomorrow I will set up a fund in her name and post information here for those who wish to donate. I have heard also that some people in Ithaca are going to hold a benefit for her. We are so grateful for all the people who love and care for Kat.

Thanks every one for your continued support!

Premarket Analysis

On Saturday, I showed my 5-year-old nieces (Seabloke's twins) how I draw MY price and trend lines, and how I erase them.

They learned quickly and were actually drawing price lines on support and resistance!

Then the younger twin (the one who has a shorter attention span than me) came up with this:


The older twin (the sentimental one) drew this:


Even more inspired now, the younger twin did this:


I'm sure they mean something...

if only I can decipher them...

I could be looking at a 50-point-profit week!

Denarii's Daughter

Denarii's daughter is still in intensive care, but is making progress - thanks to all who have prayed for her.

I'll check with Denarii if it's ok for me to post her CaringBridge journal entries here, since accessing these entries (written by Katie's mum) will require one to register with CaringBridge, and I'm not sure that everyone will want to do that.

But I do wish that you will register (it's a very simple registration that will take you less than 5 minutes to complete) to read her story, and that you'll help in ways that you can find out more about on her journal entries.

Juz Thoughts

I'm tired of maintaining a "friendly" blog in a world that's generally unfriendly and filled with people with intentions that will never be 100% clear to me. I ask myself why I've kept writing and the only logical reason that I can come up with is: I just really want to see how long I can last.

It's in my blood. I'll fight til either of these happens:
1) I drop dead
2) I lose interest

I wouldn't exactly call the week that has passed a good week. But I've been through more upsetting times. I've even been through highly traumatic phases that spanned years. The only difference between now and then is that right now, I'm putting the best and worst of me out there for everyone who chances upon this site to see and judge. It's a whole new experience - not at all fun, but definitely very challenging, very trying, and very enriching.

For a highly sensitive and emotional person like me, blogging has gotta be the worst choice of hobby. But I'm also a rebel by default. I just have to see how this will end.

My mind's really busy right now; I need to unload. I'm thinking about things and people that irk me, and also about those that have a soft spot in my heart.

I think about "virtual" friends that I have lost touch with for a while now: Andrew Unknown (welcome back!), Harry and Moyo;

I think about J;

I think about the one that I always have an extremely soft spot for: Denarii

When I think of what he's going through now, there's just no room within me for other emotions anymore.

I wish that his daughter will recover quickly, and that he will be back on his feet in no time again.

I'm not sure that my prayers will be answered, for I'm not ready to forget yet.

So, I hope that those who are reading this will remember Denarii in your prayers.

Prayers For Denarii

Denarii's daughter was injured in a fall...I'm not able to access the link that was posted, but I gather it is a serious fall....

Please keep him and his daughter in your prayers.

Be Careful What You Say In Your Email To Someone You Consider A Friend

Taichiseal has published on his new blog all the email correspondences between him and me. I've found his blog on my traffic report.

I understand I'm dealing with someone who's not in his right frame of mind. This is what he says on his blog "I thought it was a pity that she was not able to draw on my experiences, and would have to find her own way."

I'm done with him and am not even going to ask if I can actually pursue legal course of action.

This is a lesson for me and for everyone reading this: do NOT ever think that the email you sent to a person you TRUST will stay private. I've never publicly revealed D's employers - but I had shared the info in the emails; and there are also certain details that I would not have publicly revealed that are now in the public realm- all thanks to Taichiseal who has saved all our correspondences for public release.

I am beyond appalled.

I will still continue to blog. And I will NEVER remove my posts about him. I am aware that he's named his blog a way that will force me to remove the said posts if I don't ever want anyone to find out about his new blog. But he's not getting his way.

I am glad actually that the emails are out there. It's going to teach a lot of people to be very careful with ANYTHING they write to anyone they consider a FRIEND.

And with that, I'm moving on.

If this gets any more inappropriate, I'll seek legal counsel.

A New Beginning

Thank you so much, everyone who has left kind and uplifting notes for me.

I have been doing quite a bit of thinking about certain patterns that I observed in my trading.

Now, how and where do I even begin?

Most of you would have noticed by now that I don't "talk to" you. I write as if I'm talking to myself, and for as long as I'm typing, I'm able to forget that there are those out there who know me and those who don't, who are going to be reading what I've written, coz I've never developed that kind of confidence to "address an audience".

But maybe that's a good thing for you.

Because I'm able to block you out when I write, you always get what I'll call my "raw" thoughts - unsophisticated, earthy, ok maybe sometimes even septic - and a complete picture of my trading activities and performance on a daily basis. Depending on your reason for coming in here, you reap different benefits from reading about what I lay out here publicly: my life - both as a trader, and as someone who is at her very core an extreme human hater.

My thoughts are always not well-organized, always in jumbles, so I'm sorry I'm going to have to ask you to just do your best to follow along.

I want to talk about how I first got into trading.

After having worked in a bank for 3 years, and in public service (police) for 7, I decided that I've had enough of having to deal with people day in and day out. Face-to-face interaction with humans drains me in a way that's difficult for me to describe. I was always ill - migraine attacked me once every other day - and I felt like my life was going to be cut short if I continued to work in environments that require me to see and talk to people.

So, I took a permanent break from work, and enrolled myself in all sorts of courses just to see if I could find something that I could LOVE doing for the rest of my life. I've even attended NLP (neurolinguistic programming) "bootcamps", where I learned to condition my brain to not freak out at the sight of COCKROACHES. Ha!

Anyway, one of the courses I took was a 5-session basic trading course, some time in late 2007. Without any banking and finance background, or any knowledge or interest in investment and trading before, needless to say, I had a hard time in class. Everyone else seemed to have had some kind of trading experience - some were there after having been badly burnt dabbling in stocks, others had been "conned" by some PHD (???) in Options and lost a fortune trading his system that promised 7000% (along that line) returns. In a nutshell, everyone else knew the difference between stocks and forex, what support and resistance meant, they knew their MACDs and MAs, and what nots. Me? I was just CLUELESS.

But I love those candles, and was fascinated by indicators. So after "graduating" from the course, I began on a hunting spree for books and blogs on indicators especially. I played around with them, memorized those candlestick patterns with the strangest names, and started paper trading FOREX and options. I had mixed results, and had a hard time understanding and appreciating the relevance of indicators. I started reading up on chart patterns, Elliot Waves, Fib, and started to notice how everyone's basically saying the same thing, but just in different "languages". I read heaps of other books while paper trading at the same time, completely forgetting about the other things that I had wanted to pick up - spanish, italian, dancing, etc.

After being on the simulator for 6 months, I went live. That was the time that I began to blog again after having shut down my blog for 6 months. Blogging was the other thing that was very new to me then. I put up my first blog post in Jan 2008 - it was a strange experience. I should mention that it was Seabloke who INSPIRED me to start a blog. I was at her place once, and she was sitting on the floor playing with her Mac. I took a peep at what she was doing, and then burst out laughing. I couldn't believe my baby sister had become a blogger - the type that we used to make fun of all the time. Anyway, I was in an adventurous mode then, so I gave it a shot. I think I posted less than a dozen posts before I shut it down 2 months later.

End May 2008 was a new beginning for me - I started blogging actively, and trading live.

The rest's history.

As I was saying, I have been thinking a lot about my trading. What I noticed was that while posting my results did help a little initially, it has caused more harm than good as I progressed. I will not go into the details for now, and will talk more in future posts. Suffice to say that the pressure of having to maintain positive days had caused me to do on many occasions what I usually do when I feel I'm being "controlled" - I self-destruct. All I need is the trivialest of event, a minor irritant, to detonate.

Some call this phenomenon "fear of success". I'm not sure that's what I'm dealing with. If anything, I WANT success, I THIRST for success, and I want to be successful in trading more than I ever wanted anything else.

So, I really don't know what this is about. And I don't wish to dwell on it. What I'm interested in is the "HOW", not the "WHY". I want to know how to stop this vicious cycle of self-sabotaging. So I'm going to start changing some of my routines - among which is the keeping tabs of my daily results. Not only am I going to stop posting them, I'm going to stop recording them.

I am aware that I'll be losing the majority of you who have come in here daily to check out that green/red figure at the end of a trading day. But that's not going to be a regret to me. I have made friends here, and I believe that you will still drop by now and then to say 'Hi'. And that's good enough for me. I've never been one who loves attention from strangers. I cherish friendships, and I actually love to help (surprise!!!). True friends and emails telling me that I've helped in a certain way jolt my heart back to life. Hence, moving forward, this will be the purpose of my blog: to connect with others who are passionate about trading.

I'm not sure yet how I'm going to be doing it. I will definitely not be posting my daily PnL. I will, however, continue to post charts, and whenever I do, I'll post the trading log as well. I think it is important (if my purpose is to help) that people can trust that those are really trades that I've taken - since I haven't earned any credentials yet. I will be posting both winning and losing trades - anything that has some learning values in them.

I might also start posting about how I go about planning my trades, and a bunch of other stuff. I don't know for sure yet.

I will most certainly be writing a lot more on non-trading matters - maybe even some haunting past. For all I know, maybe someday this will come in handy - e.g.when I decide to write a memoir. Afterall, I did have a very dramatic and colorful history.... I could even write a novel based on my life...but I'll have to kill D first since he doesn't actually know everything there's to know about me YET. 16 years with him and I managed to keep my dark secrets to myself...I deserve a medal.

Anyway, this is NOT a farewell post. I never do farewells. When I'm gone, I'm just gone.

This is just the beginning. And I hope that by May 2010, I can finally tell you that I'm confident that I'm on the right track. What I have in mind is not merely a goal. I have a vision, and I'm afraid that for now, only one person will know.

Ziad (SURPRISE!!!!).

Going back to save my trade now.