Hi geez Been following your thread for some time and think its perfect in this market and your discipline is remarkable. a few questions Your market bias before the open ....often i find this a problem for me at times do you?.....your thoughts i noticed your world of trading has been reduced to the same few, are you still scanning 200 stocks in the evening? Do you find the indices easier to trade in this enviorment? Thanks GEEZ cheers john
Thanks for following John, I agree with you that my bias can "get in the way" of some good set-ups. If you look at my afternoon trades today, I actually switched to a long bias because we couldn't sell off and I took SPY, RIMM long. In regards to my "universe" of stocks: I am only using 1 monitor, so I key on a select few stocks everyday. I still scan about 200 every night, but lately the patterns have not been there on the daily charts to play, so I go back to my "favorites" list to find trades. In regards to trading the indexes: Alot of times I feel it's easier to catch the overall move that I think is coming by trading the SPY or DIA (or the short ETF's SDS, DXD), because the individual stocks can whip you out (stop you), while the index keeps going in the direction you played. But mostly, I trade the indexes because I don't have alot of screen space to track all the stocks and I use the indexes to play the overall trend. -G
4/06/09: Total P/L + 90.78 7 trades 2 wins 4 losses 1 b/e (of course the 1 b/e, DXD stopped me and reversed right to tgt) I have to work right now. I'll write a summary of each trade later.
4/06/09: Trades today: 9:49 FAZ BUY 16.97 * FAZ was extended to the down side on the daily chart, and after a strong 1st move on the 5 min chart FAZ put in a reversal long at 9:45. I bought at 16.97 stop under the pivot (16.57( and tgt 17.77. Exited for a loss. 10:10 AAPL SHORT 114.50 * AAPL daily chart was extended to the upside, it gapped down in the a.m., rallied and put in a lower high reversal at 10:10 on the 5 min chart. I shorted under the 10:10 low (114.52) stop over the pivot (114.90) tgt just under lod 113.70. Hit tgt. 10:59 DXD BUY 57.84 *DXD puts in a higher low at 10:55 9the high was 57.78), I got abad entry at 57.84(should have been 57.80) ,set my stop under the pivot (57.59) and tgt 58.34. it went to 58.24 on 2 tries, so I moved my stop to b/e . if I got the 57.79 entry I would have had my tgt. DXD took me out b/e bottomed at .82) turned and went to tgt. Another example of hold for stop or tgt. 11:35 RIMM SHORT 61.68 * RIMM daily chart was way extended and getting extended on the 5 min chart. It put in a lower high and I shorted under the low (61.70) stop over the pivot 61.88 and tgt at 61.28. it went .28 in my favor then stopped me for a loss. 1:12 SPY BUY 82.76 *Spy was in a downtrend all a.m., put in it's 1st higher low on the 5 min chafrt at 1:00 and at 1:10 put in a higher low. Because of the strength of the overall indexes (and stocks) I took this buy signal, stop under the pivot (82.56) tgt at 83.47. Stopped for a loss. 2:06 SPY BUY 82.97 *At 1:50 SPY makes a strong move up and is followed by a base near the top on the 5 min chart. I went long when SPY passed over the high of the base (82.97) stop below the base (82.73) and tgt at 83.47. Whipped around and stopped for a loss. 2:49 RIMM BUY 63.40 *The indexes were ugly for patterns at this time, but overall were not breaking down. I looked at the stgocks that had the most rel. strength to try a long and found RIMM and AAPL holding near the highs. RIMM had a tighter stop than AAPL so I took it for a long over the 2:45 bar (63.40) stop under the pivot (63.10) and tgt just past HOD (64.00). When RIMM got to the tgt area it blew past 64.00 and I put a .05 trail stop on it and took me out at 64.22 for a +.82 gain. this is one of my favorite things to do. you may get stopped just under the tgt, but alot of times you can ride the extra momentum aother .15-.30 cents in your favor. This one added another .22 to my total.