gap down, take profit getting out of all of it on a retracement. sure enough, goes up. Get back in 200 @ 58.50. I'm still long 200 @ 59.82. What i'm discovering is it isn't worth it to hold overnight just looking for a gap up. Either I play till EOD/multiday trend is broke/stop is hit, or I take profit same day. If my price wasn't at the low, i don't think i'd even hold it overnight, because as it is, it wouldn't be that hard for slb to trade down to yesterday's low off the open...and then move higher. In this case, its already broke out, so I just said, wtf, why not. Unlike today, i'm not getting out on a retracement tomorrow. hopefully I close this out tomorrow in the green before oil inventory. you guys in anything?
like a newb, i didn't get out on the bounce after slb retraced on the hard sell-off. instead i got out a buck lower. Still, the trade was profitable, but i gave up a lot. Because today's sell-off wasn't even that big. It could have been much, much worse. Looks like i'm gonna have to rethink how i play things like this from now on.
there's been a somewhat noticable (if often short lived, though) pattern of oil (i use USO as a quick realtime reference) prices and the services/big-oil (slb, rig, bp, xom) lagging behind. If there is a large enough discrepency, often a predictable change in the stock occurs. I bought some SLB too this morning on this predicament. Held on too long (could've had a quick gain), and bought a little more at the bottom. That was a nice retracement to 60 -- I was hoping for more. We'll see how it does tommorow, with the oil inventories report at 10:30.
worst thing for me is to talk about a good position. more & more, i am hesitant to even mention % gains... it seems to ignite my Ego and shift perception to P&L vs just managing trades. i dont jknow why it works like that, but it does and ive stopped tempting fate!