NoDoji's Day Trading Log

Hermit, geez: I was unable to sleep all night because of your kind words. Now I'm afraid to trade today

 

+$282 Day
+$7220 Month
+$15235 Year (25% ROI-to-date)

Put on small DISCA swing short looking for eventual gap retracement over time.

Short ORLY @ 32.65 overbought, covered oversold @ 32.35 for a $150 gain. Caught the “meat of the move” very nicely.

Offered 9.25 HOTT on run up and missed by .03 cents. HOTT continually taunts my limit orders and the volume was far too dismal to chase at market. Or so I thought.

Short ORLY @ 32.64 overbought, near HOD. It rallied after that and I placed an offer @ 33.35, then moved it to 33.50, then moved it to 33.60 and it only hit 33.59 before dropping beautifully. So I move my offer back to 33.50 for the next bounce and this time it hits 33.49 before tanking. My husband, on the other hand, to whom I yelled “Short ORLY now!” got a position on after some platform issues (he wasn’t picky about price like me) and took a quick $300 off it. He then shorted the next rally and took another $300.

End of day I enjoyed an ORLY volatility scalp using strictly L2 action, short @ 33.41, covered @ 33.25 for a $163 gain, excellent “meat of the move” scalp.

Put on small DRYS positions in the IRAs again @ 3.52. Very limited downside (3.52 to 0 is not so far); nice retirement upside (to $100 and beyond some day would be effective).

Bought AFAM in IRAs @ 20.05, stop @ 19.50. Moved stops to just above b/e and got stopped out late in the day.

February’s close marks some milestones for me. I logged into Etrade for the first time in my life in late February 2008 and traded for the first time. I remember being so nervous, it took me 10 minutes to locate the “BUY” button, which was as clear as the nose on Jimmy Durante’s face. (This was the standard Etrade screen; I knew nothing about their direct access platform until July).

February’s close also leaves me with five profitable months in a row, with the last two months profitable enough to conclude that I’m currently trading for a living. And, although I traded very conservatively in February compared to January after some poor risk management on a couple trades, I still came very close to my January P/L, and had only one small losing day.

Thanks to so many of you for answering my many questions and offering support and solid advice!

 

Great job NoD! Fantastic to hear 5 months in a row of profitability.

Now...what are we going to do if they pass the "Let Wall Street Pay for Wall Street's Bailout"? Or, the uptick rule?

They should pass a "Make it Illegal for Markets to Go Down" bill.

- Your Local Curmudgeon

 

Thanks, Mad! This bill is great idea, but let me cover my short positions at a profit first

P.S. - You're way too young to be a curmudgeon.

 

Friday I took a small swing short position in DISCA, looking for 50% retracement of its last move from oversold to overbought. My reason for this trade is that when I looked at the 3-month chart, I saw it had established very strong resistance at 15.50 from which it pulled back nicely each time.

Friday, it pulled back a bit after I put on the trade, then rallied to resistance, where it stayed the rest of the day. This left my 30-day chart with a bullish engulfing pattern on a weak day in the market, inspiring me to do further analysis of this trade. I looked at the 1-year chart (attached) and saw that it traded as high as 26.83 within the past year, making it possibly attractive to long term investors despite the earnings miss last week.

I normally look at a 1-year chart before trading any stock for which I don't already know the 52-week S/R levels. If I see a stock gapped up in pre-market, but the 1-year chart leaves a lot of room for continued uptrend, I'll wait for failure to make new high before shorting the stock. For some reason, I failed to check the 1-year in this case.

As a result of my analysis, I've decided to exit this trade tomorrow should it break through this near term resistance level. My expected profit on the trade was $400 and my risk should certainly not be any more than that.

I attached my chart analysis so you can see how the "big picture" can influence how "the crowd" may view a price level. In this case, 15.50 is major resistance on the 3-month chart, and gave me confidence in the trade. But the 1-year chart leaves a lot of room for continued price gain, so a long term investor or swing trader might find 15.50 to be a good price to go long, especially after Friday's candlestick.

Best of trading to everyone this week!

 

+$170

Set a stop on DISCA @ 15.65, hit for $390 loss. Now, here is a sign of the progress I’ve made as a trader. DISCA moved up to 15.80 and then pulled back nicely. In the past I would’ve had the very dangerous noob thought, “I shouldn’t have put in a stop.”, but instead I had the very rational thought, “Good stop, but I should’ve traded it again at that overbought condition!”

Short ORLY @ 33.20, covered oversold @ 32.91 (.02 cents from the bottom of the move) for a $286 gain. Intended to short the bounce, but it stalled. Based on the L2 action, I should've put on a small position at the stalled price with a tight stop, and gotten the advantage of another chunk of change.

Short ORLY 32.99, from 50% pullback retracement of the run up bar. Target of 32.68 partially filled (my bottom picking skills too good for my own good today), then it rallied and I exited the remainder @ 32.95 for a total $200 gain.

Missed a couple more nice ORLY scalps after that one; it moved quickly and I didn’t stay focused on the stock.

Offered 9.10 HOTT, overbought at failure to make a new high; missed by .03 cents. It then found support at 9.01, so I pulled the offer. That higher support took it back to a test of the HOD, where I offered 9.25, missed by .03 cents. Later, offered 9.15 HOTT, missed by .03 cents. “Nanny-nanny boo-boo,” says HOTT to NoD, “Catch me if you can!”

Covered the last of my old ORLY for a $75 gain when it and the SPY were oversold and it was testing the LOD with lots of buy orders parked there. Needless to say, my covering incited a breakdown of the LOD. I even did a play-by-play chart analysis in chat concluding it would make a new low, yet impatiently covered near the LOD instead of trusting my own reasonable analysis.

Short ORLY @ 32.52, covered @ what turned out to be 32.38 for a $70 gain. My L2 was lagging while I was trading and I did not get the price I expected. It wasn’t slippage, it was an actual mismatch between the watch list price (the real one) and my L2. This rarely but occasionally happens.

Short ORLY @ 32.30, breaking down, target 32.19. Exited @ 32.25 when the breakdown was not as robust as I’d hoped, because I didn’t want to hold overnight at this (relatively) low price.

 

NoD,

I can't seem to match your stochastic signal, do you mind sharing the parameters you use for your full stochastic.

 

Mike, she uses 3 min charts, you may have a different time frame up(poss 2min or 5 min)

 

congrats ND on your performance it's really impressive !

 

cvds, thanks!

mikea, my settings are:

%D Full Stochastic (%D Interval: 5, %K Interval: 5, Slowing Period: 3)

%K Full Stochastic (K Interval: 5, Slowing Period: 3)