Do watch out for confirmation bias; it's not your friend. [1] Do you have a specific theory about why your picks might be better than random, recent successes aside? If not, then it's worth taking a little more time, or maybe running a backtest to see if you can get any kind of confirmation. Overnight gaps are a really painful way to find out that your idea is sub-optimal. [1] In fact, a quick glance at this list to see if any of the categories poke you in the eye might be useful:
Actually I have only been analyzing the price and volume action, with very little fundamental research. BTW up $824 this morning, premarket, though I expect to post a loss on CENX when I start seeing data on it. Small loss on NE, too, but I will put a stop under it and I am thinking it is good for a small gain. Ooops there is my gain! I am now up $928 thanks to NE turning around for me. Not rocket science, I am mostly just looking at trends on daily and hourly charts for my picks, and sometimes a 1 minute chart to pick an entry point. Profit from SDRL, GUSH, NE, and X. Apparent $144 loss on CENX which is not showing in my P&L yet but I will wait until after the open before selling. If recent history repeats itself it is consolidating prior to a 30 cent gain on my 1600 shares.
Not too shabby, huh? A good day's work. For tinight I am holding GUSH, HRL, NBL, WSFS. GO, OIL! HRL? Hey, everybody gotta eat, right?
Too heavily weighted in in oil overnight imo. You'll be ok probably, but you are developing some bad habits. Sometimes those big wins like you had today... can be the worst thing to happen to you. But we'll see. Hormel is OK, and the financial stock.
Isn't Hormel the folks that make SPAM? And HE has been having a rough time. Some limit days... Oh dear. Although, in thinking about it, if China keeps freaking out on their pork problem, HE goes up and up, and then that increases costs for Hormel, SPAM gets more expensive, so stock goes down?
Okay I'll take that. I was up to $640 at 1030. Learning to quit while I'm ahead. I have figured out I need to just cancel all stops on stocks in the morning while the big boys are selling off large positions. You would think that it would be possible to buy on the 2 or 3 second dip, but NO-ooooooo. Looks like oil is getting clobbered. Thanks, GUSH, for all the money. See ya later some time. Okay I have cleared the boatd. No more intraday action for me today. Later I will look at what I might want to hold for a day or three. This swing and overnight trading is treating me good. I make a good overnight profit and then trade half of it away some times.
I lied. Went back in. Ended up +$382 at the closing bell. Holding overnight again. I wasn't feeling the love for oil so no Gush but I did take a small position in NBL cause it is such a cool company and has some nice resources, and has often been outperforming the sector. GF works for Shell so she disapproves. Anyway holding NBL, AKS, X, (Yeah I know... too much steel. I am looking at where the two companies sit on my interday scanner and I am liking them.), and HRL again. Does anyone ever pronounce it "hurl"? LOL. Bit by bit, I am regaining my initial big acct losses. If I can keep it up I should be back up to $50k in a month. That is my immediate goal. As well as just being a better, or at least not so bad person, and making better beer. And keeping the house clean while GF is slaving over a hot desk all day at One Shell Square. Before the bell I also had 100 shares of ESTC and forgot to cancel my target sell order. Didn't forget actually, just had other priorities and I would get them in a minute. Wow was I surprised when somebody reached up out of the grass and snatched my 100 shares away from me when my limit was set like 60 cents above the last price. Now it has a $3 spread so I am not buying now in the aftermarket but this thing might be an opening bell rocket. I really can't say I was trading all that well. The market trended up pretty good and I basically could do no magic, but neither could I do much wrong. I could have made 1.5% just buying TQQQ and holding it all day. This was a good trading for dummies day. Step 1, buy stock. Step 2. Dont do anything. Step 3. Sell whatever isn't making money. Sometimes it really seems like trader gnomes are watching my trades and playing little pranks on me as soon as I click "Transmit". Stupid trader gnomes. Hate them. P&L is up to $388. I made $6 just while I was typing this post. Isn't trading just wonderful?
Short some AMZN at 1852 Growley. Edit... it dropped as I was posting that lol. Give it a second Edit 2: Put an order in to short 25 shares at 1854.50 and wait
ARGHHH!!!! Pre-cappuccino trading. Botched entry started me out on a 27 cent loss. Noobs reading this, see the little blue dash marking my entry? In a trend, always let the stock approach the mean. The center lane, if you will. Or wherever in recent history it pulls back to, in its minor fluctuations within the trend. I could have come in ten minutes later for 18 cents less. Now I won't be in the green for another half hour if the trend holds. The sooner a trade is solidly in the green, the sooner you can safely move your stop up to lock the trade into profitability mode. You don't want a trade to spend a half hour or an hour in catch up mode because you are vulnerable for that time, for no reason. If at any time you are vulnerable, you want to at least be somewhat profitable. On this chart, I would have been at the green break at the close of the next bar, and barely into profit by the second one. As I write this, 15 minutes later, I am watching the price march upwards nicely but still in the red. The reference point here is the three white lines. Bollinger bands. The center line is a moving average. The upper and lower are two standard deviations. In an up trend the price will mostly stay above the center line since this is an average of the previous several prices. It will seldom penetrate the upper or lower in a meaningful way. If it crosses the center line you are looking at a possible down trend within the time frame of your chart, especially if the body of the cander crosses under. So you can see how even in an uptrend, you can lose money with a bad entry and especially with a terror exit or a stop that is too tight. Holey guacamoley! That was a brutal opening bell! QQQ gapped up though so everything should come back up okay. Patience patience. Meanwhile I am making a few dollars scalping TQQQ as it saws its way upward. I lost heart and bailed. Tried scalping TQQQ and SQQQ and the riddim was just not there. Tried playing QQQ when it started looking stable but the long range scanner showed diddly until I found RUHN which was very much in play. Bought on the consolidation before confirmation and it paid off nicely with a $288 win. I figured it would bounce back down at the $7.00 mark and so I set the limit at $750 in case it ran, then aggressively walked the stop up and caught it at $676 on the way back down. That brought me back up to -$976. I will watch it for another setup and hopefully recoup a little more. Here I am already set up for the next run. You can see the blue dash where I bought at just over $6.00 and then the red dash where I sold at just over $6.75. That's the way it is supposed to work. Now waiting to see if it will fly again and I think maybe not. I am back into HRL and RRD and they have drug me down a bit but the trend is up and they are both near the mean, with stops under the centerline. QQQ is coming up. I am not into it at the moment but I like to watch it to guage the overall market direction when I am not trading it. Same with TVIX which is down for now. Still got my eye on RUHN in case it ruhns up for me. Darn. Stupid RUHN. stopped out three times. DONE with RUHN. Holding nothing but HRL now. I am thinking I am kinda stuck with it until after the bell. Folks gotta eat. I am thinking it is still trending up, relative to the market and as it picks up later, it will reflect in the price. At the moment it is a $.12 loser and just sliding sideways. I think I will set it on autopilot with a trailing stop, and pull me a beer. I feel like I been sorting wildcats all morning. P&L showing -$1603. Please, everybody support our favorite canned processed animal byproduct food substance! Have a nice Trailerpark Tenderloin (spam) sammitch! Let's get this stock up out of the grass!