Whats up Don...new to the board. Very interesting post. I also play gaps...but today was a tough day for gaps as the market gapped up and continued. I am curious who were your winners today. Where they brokers? Did you also play MU...just like TXN, gapped up and ran up. Where is your NY office located?
Didn't get filled on my brokers Monday, I don't play MU myself, but many in my office do. I made money on financials. Our NYC office is on Broadway (115). Our C.O.O. is holding an Open House on Mar 7th if you would care to attend. Call 212.748.6916 to sign up. (Now I have to apologize to others on the board for "advertising")....just kidding, a long running joke on the board. Welcome aboard, and If I can help with anything, just ask!!
First, let me post yesterdays action: AIG-small looser NKE-small looser CAM-small winner As you see, not a huge day, in fact down but only 100 bucks. Tuesday: Got a ton of openings, 4 winners and 3 loosers for a profit of 400 on 800 shares each. Don, I have started to adjust my envelope a little in terms of taking into account the different stocks beta. For instance keeping an 1% on IBM, but also decreasing tp .8 on lower priced stocks with lower beta. Although if spoos shows significant above/below I'll take that considering first of course.
Got LLY today, made $360 (could've been more....but I feel ok, I used my "slingshot" exit order, which worked even though the stock did go a bit higher, it really reveresed quickly).
Don I am a retail customer. Can this method be utilized going through brokerages using ARCA or Island?
Some brokers may allow you to enter the Opening Only Orders, but the problem comes in when you need to place many orders (a buy and a sell on a number of stocks). I use 15 stocks, 2000 shares each x 2, for buy and sell which equals about 60,000 shares times around $50 stock price or $3 Million in orders (but only a fraction of that in risk). I would suggest that yo filter for a couple of good stocks, try that to begin with. Hope this helps, and if you do well, you can increase the numbers a bit (and there is always the option of coming to a proprietary firm for capital use)...
It can be done with IB, and rumor is that they are adding OO orders to their workstation. It is a bit of a challenge to monitor your open positions, while you are simultaneously checking on what's open, what's not open yet, and cancelling the unfilled orders as stocks open inside the envelope. It is easy to accidentally cancel a good order in the hubbub, which I did a couple of times last week, missing a couple of winning trades. I have just been doing this with real trades starting last week with 100 share orders and will increase size slowly if I can book a winning week or two. Last week was a little rocky due to pilot error as described above, and a couple of mistimed exits as well, but the potential was there. Positive by 21 cents for this week, only placing about 6 sets of orders per day, getting a couple of fills per day. Suppose I'll have to look at a prop firm if this works.
Don, IMHO, you can do this on a retail level, but your edge is dramatically reduced. As you point out, you will do 15 stocks, or 30 orders. On a daily basis, with this many stocks, you may get filed on three, maybe four of your orders. 4/30 = 28.5%. If you have 2 stocks, and therefore 4 orders, your "hit rate" would then be 28.5% of 4, or an average of 1 a day. In my experience, the nice thing about OO strategy is the fact that the more you get filled, the better you are off. When _I_ get one fill, I do not do so well. When I get 3 or more fills, I do better. I do not know if this is because of my trading skill, or because of a correlation to a greater expentancy when a bunch of Specialists together (they are not colluding - just turns out that way) decide to all open their respective stock well below/above it's days Fair Value. nitro
As I am with IB, I have been very cautious about how many I do _EXACTLY_ because I cancel the unfilled ones immediately (taking away my attention from the ones that may have been filled.) _HOWEVER_, as soon as IB implements them, OO orders cancel _AUTOMATICALLY_ if they are not filled on the opening print. Still, even then, you run into the problem of not being able to do the "appropriate" number of them. nitro
One point to Krebs...you said you were cancelling orders that opened inside the opening bid/ask envelope. Since these are designated "opening only orders" they are automatically cancelled if not filled. So there should be no need to be cancelling anything. All the fills are now live orders, and now you need to concentrate on exit stragegies...you may want to review back a couple of pages ...I put up some hints...