90% of my trades are long. I should be shorting more often, but I seem to have an irrational apprehension towards it, which is just plain dumb. It depends on t

90% of my trades are long. I should be shorting more often, but I seem to have an irrational apprehension towards it, which is just plain dumb. It depends on the trade. If I have time to get a better feel of the way the stock has been moving, I'll trade volatility. That's when I'm setting lots of limit orders in a short period of time, which is uncommon for me. If I knew how to trade programmatically, I'd be doing a lot more of this. It's something I should learn this year. But most of my trading is based on what I feel are fundamental flaws I pricing. I make it a point not to actively monitor. I have Google Finance up all day, but I'm not glued to it. I just set a limit order to close my position as soon as I get into it. No real automated trading tools and don't stop out (which is really bad practice I should change). I've looked at autotrading via subscriptions, but since I'm booming gains as high as these pros, I see no point to encumber myself with complexity. For now, I'm a profitable simpleton. Of course, I fully understand my days are numbered. I'd much rather I didn't trade, but I can't any other activity with this kind if return in time invested. You're right--I should be coming against a big loss. Actually, I have seen big losses, but I just never realized them. That's what I mean by being patient. I just wait it out until the company turns around. The sites I use for insight are: Google Finance and Trefis. And I see what is going on in the order book--I use Interactive Brokers, which offers access to almost tick by tick trading.