Palawan, do you trade full time? Seems you are a bustle of trading activity and very current in knowledge! Congrats on your successful management! Lost a bit on my ECA-TC calls as underlying closed lower than yesterday. Trading range for the day indicates trend still likely there, so stayed in. Just noticed that clear candles near trend top characteristically don't move more than $1, which today was reached in the first hour, then slid from there. I stayed in, fearing I might miss the resistance breakthrough later in the day past $55 while I was busy at work. Always learning something new, even though I've spent hudreds of hours staring at and studying the same stock, trying to see how it works. Something I'm definitely not good at is knowing when to take money off the table, but I'm learning... ECA-TC SEP.54 calls x 5 @$1.45 From someone who's never kept any money from this game...
Thanks, Rob. i'm not a full-time trader, but i do work for a semi-govt outfit and our work-environment is pretty lax. as long as we make progress on our projects and finish any high-priority work, our boss doesn't breathe down our necks and wouldn't say a word even if we're on the internet doing personal stuff most of the day. I'm gonna try to be a backseat driver on your position just for today, and you don't have to listen to anything i say but maybe one or 2 items you'll agree with and next time, you'll be able to make a decision. i've been there and i'm still there many times when i freeze-up and can't do anything because i'm afraid to miss-out on some possible gains. with your position, i would have closed it when there was gain. if you missed-out on selling it for a gain, then it would have been ok to hold it coz as you said, the trend is still intact (by your analysis) reasons why i'd have sold it (but i don't know if some apply to you coz you might be trading in a non-US exchange): it's close to the resistance level the oil-related stocks i watch (RIG and OIH) were down all 3 markets were negative (DOW, Nasdaq, and S&P500) - hard for a stock to be up on a market down day. like swimming upstream weekend is coming up and don't like holding on the weekend as anything could happen (i.e. terrorist attack) - may not apply to a biotech company in which a catalyst such as some kind of drug announcement could take place over the weekend and may miss-out on some considerable gains and if you don't agree with any of them, just remember one thing... this is a continuous game and don't feel that when you close-out the position and miss-out on the breakout, that you won't get another opportunity. there's a lot of opportunities that are gonna present themselves to you, and some may be better than this one. you wanna make sure that you have capital available when that happens. how about closing the position whenever it gets close to the 55 resistance and buying back in when it does finally break it with follow-through? that might be a safer strategy even if you're buying at a higher price, or even if you might have to buy higher strikes (and hopefully longer time) options. there have been times also that when i sell in the morning when it's still positive and there's a sell-off in the stock, it feels good to buy it lower right before market-close and hold it for the weekend knowing that you have a lower cost-basis and still have the possibility of cashing-in on a possible gap-up (if any) the following monday... all of these are just in my humble opinion... Best of Luck to you...
what i meant by this is that it boosts your confidence-level... we need that or we'll keep on 2nd-guessing every decision. last week was a bad week for me, and all i could think about was that i can't let that continue or i'll lose all my gains. i don't mind telling you, my confidence-level was quite low. all i wanted was for this week not to be another big negative compared to last friday's mark-to-market values. i would have been happy with a break-even result or even just a little loss for the week. having a nice gain has helped me to regain some confidence and i'm looking forward to next week. this wasn't the case last weekend when i was afraid of the coming monday... Good Luck.
Great counsel, Palawan, and I take it to heart. Yes, I too would now rather have sold at day's high early at the risk of losing the breakthrough, and then maybe bought 1 call for over the weekend at the new low. It would be easier on my gut! Great opportunity for you there at work! One many can only dream of! I am amazed at the opportunistic gifts that consistently come my way - and those are only the ones I can see and have some preparation to enter! Since starting trading, I have never been short on opportunities on fast moving stocks - just unable to as yet take full advantage of them! And the severe losses were strictly a result of deviating from my personal promises to myself. The things that have opened up to me since I ventured out on my own are at exactly my speed and the right time. All I can say for sure is, God is good to me! I hope your trading goes well this week, sounds like you have your strategies well honed. Yes, the energy sector as a whole was down Fri. - I'm not sure why. A market-wide imposition on energy stocks everywhere I imagine - I hope that means they each can resume their respective trends after the bearish influence evaporates - that is, if it is indeed present only for the day. Happy trades to you...
mini-update 8/29/2005: Doubled the SPY call-position... SPY Oct 22 calls - recent addition at 1.75/each Good market-reaction to the recent "bad" news. Will close 10 of the calls if we start getting a sell-off today. Good Trading.
mini-update 8/29/2005: Added another 10 calls to the SPY position... Tripled-up the original position. SPY Oct 22 calls - recent addition @ 1.90/each Good Trading.
Unfortunately it's not optionable, but as I mentioned in the stocks forum, LOUD recently caught my eye as another potential breakout candidate. Opened a partial position today at $1.01, chart is looking like a high probability breakout candidate to me.
Well, Palawan, mercy is on my side today! Even though I was holding calls over the weekend after losing out on making money on Friday's stock movement, and market opened with Katrina howling today, I was quite afraid of a down day, yet 'twas not so. Stock opened up $1.40, much to my very pleasant surprise, closed out my calls a little higher than what I should have closed them out at at Friday's high (at today's high, thank God), and bought 2 puts to ride the day. Unfortunately, I didn't capitalize on the swing - AGAIN, and closed them out slightly lower than purchase price, then stayed flat rest of the day while I was at work. Stock has penetrated resistance and upper Bolinger band on intraday swing, so we're due for a turnaround anytime soon. It sure feels good to be sitting flat on steady profits this week, even though I've still screwed up a number of money making swings. Good to see things are sailing again for you. From someone who's never kept any money from this game...
Chagi, how did your suggestion for LOUD come to you - fundamentals, or techs only? And what do you see in there? I hope it fares as well as TMTA did for you. Are you in anything else right now?
Not in anything else right now, though I'm monitoring CVQ.V (CV Tech, they make ColdFX) very closely, CVQ is kind of overbought right now though I think... Anyways, that said, LOUD is actually a stock that was on my watchlist from about a year ago when it did a really big run up in late November 2004. I use a website called Stockscores.com to track a few watchlists worth of stocks, and tend to find their proprietary indicator fairly useful. That said, the fundamentals of LOUD don't exactly light my fire, but they aren't terrible to the extent of scaring me away either. LOUD is purely a technical play for me, based entirely on how the chart looks. It busted through resistance at $1.00 on heavy volume last Friday, and appears that it might have now settled back a bit against support at $1.00 on lower volume, but I'm very curious to see if $1.00 will hold tomorrow. Most important thing about LOUD is that it exhibits three key things (these are somewhat cliched expressions btw...) - long-term down trend - flattening out (putting in a pretty solid bottom recently) - rising optimism (nice gentle upwards slope, hasn't gone verticle yet) This is somewhat similar to the TMTA play, in that the chart action attracted me to the stock to open a position, the key difference being that I am far, far more familiar with TMTA than I am with LOUD. Speaking of TMTA, I'm still waiting for it to settle down some, still seems a bit overbought, and I feel that it'll retrace a bit further to support at $1.50 or so.