This morning started off pretty rough. Jumped in FAF, since it started moving right off the open, turns out it was a spinoff ipo of some sort so market sold and got a horrible fill. Lesson learned, never market sell an illiquid stock that's moving to the downside. It's pretty hard to ignore a -400 dollar trade, but had to move on. The next couple of trades happened fairly fast. Longed AMGN and FTI and picked up VXX for some protection if the market didn't cooperate. Those two trades looked like they were going to work out, picked up some CSIQ at 9.75 and luckily didn't have to sit through much pain on that one either. Finally the APC started recovering a bit, played it, but didn't make much on it, I guess I was just overwhelmed with everything that was going on. I'm liking this trading in a group thing..the guidance is definitely nice, but it's also a plus to have some quick interaction with people instead of just staring at a screen all day. I don't know, we'll see how things play out in the next couple of days, but as for right now I'm grinning ear to ear.
Alright, back on track.. Just played UPRO vs VXX this morning. Right off the open I played market to the upside using 200 shares UPRO and 300 shares VXX as a hedge and that worked out well. Was wrong on the second one, and right two more times. Then played the downside using 200 UPRO and 500 VXX. The idea was right, but the share size was definitely wrong for how much VXX had slowed down. All in all, safe day.
Are the shares traded all in/ all out, or do you scale in and out of the positions? Also, why not post your losing days? I think it will benefit you. Anytime I start thinking dangerous trading thoughts I have but to click on this link to my journal and it sets me straight in a hurry: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=132626&perpage=10&pagenumber=3
Good point, I will from here on out. I couldn't cut the bad trade until it made sense so took 636 down. Some trades I'm scaling, some I'm in and out, it just depends on the trade. I'll read through your journal this weekend, the bit I just did looks like it'll be a good read.
Life happened so I didn't trade Mon-Wednesday. Thursday back in the saddle the market didn't give much besides THO. Even with that I didn't play it well enough to make the most of it. Friday was fairly easy, two trades and done well before noon.
Pretty neat, found my group on youtube...thought i'd post the link: http://www.youtube.com/user/OMGYAK
Just would like to know, how are you scanning for your trades? Whats the criteria? and waht software? I use trade-ideas.com .
Well, right now I'm just going based on the group leaders calls so no scanning software. I'll scan through the big name stocks throughout the day, draw some trendlines and set some alerts while also taking advantage of the finviz heatmaps. I know the guy uses trade ideas, but I'm not sure what settings. As for trading today, it was pretty slow. I tried to make stuff happen with AAPL, meaning I got bored and gave away money. There was a big trade in the group today IFLG, but I ended up playing it in my swing account since it was a low dollar stock. Long day, gave some money back. On to the next..