This is my first post. I'd like to thank Geez for sharing the logs. A question, why did you decide to short GOLD at 11:36 at 67.11? It looks to me it's within the middle of the range and is being fairly valued. Thanks and keep it up. brelip
Week Ending 5/22/09: Total P/L +2,705.44 24 trades 12 wins 11 losses 1 b/e YTD P/L +25,407.69 148 wins 159 losses 18 b/e Win Avg. 48.2% Ratio 1.89
fh2000, I enter my trades using limit orders. I exit on most trades with a market order. How I wish I had bracket orders...makes things so much easier! I enter my trades with a limit set about .02-.04 over my desired price(if going long) depending on high much volume or how low of a stock price. As soon as I enter a trade I put a hard stop in at my stop price and an alert about .10 away from my target. I never lift the hard stop. I always leave that in place until I am within .10 of target, then I cancel the stop and try to "walk" my target down. The nice thing about the hard stops on the high volume stocks is the slippage is very low and alot of times you get a better exit than your stop price because you catch some of the trades that bounce back in your direction too. But on lower volume stocks I will play less shares in case of slippage. SNDK got me the other day for about .05 slippage (with 1400 shares on a $13 stock) because the volume was not there. That's why you will see me stick to high volume ETF's and stocks. Hope that helps-G
TraderSU, Regarding CRM: You got it. Multi-day move down and then a big gap down on the daily chart. Waited for the first higher low to buy. Easy and simple. It wasn't on my morning watchlist, but it's like I have this sweet little angel in my computer that sends me other stocks that are gapping..this was one of them. Now if I can just get that angel to be hot and wear little white lace panties around...life would be good! (Where's my coffee angel??!!!) Regarding AAPL: I am not sure what a rick-shaw man is (maybe Jeg's Angel?). But here is why I bought AAPL. First I looked at the daily chart and I saw it's still above the pivot low it made on 5/13. It has a few days of pullback, but nothing that really shows too much weakness, so if the indexes showed any strength AAPL was on my list of stocks to watch long. All I did was buy the first higher low it made after 10:10. I try not to overthink trades.....If I see a buy setup on a stock I have a long watch on and the indexes look OK, I buy it. I'm not the smartest branch on the tree, or smartest leaf on the branch, or however those sayings go....(maybe it's make like a tree and get out of here)...point is, I try to "dumb down" my trading. I want very easy entries. I am not smart enough read the market in all these little details, so I just wait for something I recognize and I take it. Plain and Simple. Momma always said.....oh nevermind, you get the idea. Regarding GOLD: I'm headed over SLF #2's place today, so I will post the 1 min chart of GOLD from there. This one was a spready thing......GOLD, not my SLF. That's for a whole different journal. Also, you had a question for me last week that I couldn't get to because I was working and now I can't remember...do you remember what it was? If so, let me know...have a great weekend SU. G
gotta_trade, I do plan on posting my patterns, my only problem is my main computer and laptop have security on them that don't let me paste and print, but I will try and run into the main office and post them...sorry for the delay. If the weekend goes REALLY well, maybe I'll post from the new SLF's place......fingers crossed.
Thanks brelip for following, I am attaching charts of what I was looking for to go short on GOLD at 11:36. First is the GOLD daily chart, to see how extended to the upside it was and with the morning gap up this was my top short watch. Second chart is the 5 min GOLD chart. #1 is the long red (selling) bar that perks my attention to start watching for a short set-up. #2 is the bar that I entered on. (67.11 at 11:36). You can see that it broke below the 11:30 5 mintue bar low of 67.14 and this is my signal to short it. As you can see it turned back to the upside right away, but once I am in a trade I leave it for stop or target almost 95% of the time. The stop was set at 67.51. Third chart is DIA (the dow index) 5 min chart. #2 shows what the market was doing when I entered GOLD. I want to be on the same side of the market when I take most trades. The 2 charts on the bottom show what I was seeing at the moment of the trade so you cannot see happened next, only what we see in the moment, not the future. The only ones who can do that are Thanagar (dam you POT) and Jeg (the prophet). I hope this helps explain things....now for alittle SLF time. Have a good weekend!-G
Thanks for very clear explanation. Regarding the question - it was very specific to the market conditions of that day and even I don't remember exact details. May be you can provide some thumb-rule... FED has some not-so-good announcement last day and pre-market was showing weakness in banks; but you were seeking possible strength in banks (and you were right). How to correctly interpret news and pre-market activities?