I was looking at some of your trades Hitman... I do not wish to criticise your tape reading (indeed I am in no position to criticise it, since I didn't witness the bid and ask interplay of any of your trades), but I would like to point out a few things that may help to improve upon your trade selection... I notice that you like to buy bottoms. When buying bottoms for scalping purposes, I find it desirable for the stock and its first tier sympathies to at least be in a daily uptrend ... you seem to be buying bottoms in stocks that are not trending up .... now there is nothing wrong with that if that is your preferred technique and, indeed, the risk:reward ratio can be rather healthy... but in trying to find a trade-off between risk:reward and the trade win rate, I tend to buy dips in uptrends, not in downtrends... so a stock like GTW in a near-term daily updraft is probably more amenable to bottom picking intraday... you may wish to combine daily characteristics with intraday characeristics... indeed a couple of hours every evening absorbing the longer term price charts of your favorite stocks means that you will 'just know' when things are set up right ... just a thought, not a major criticism.
A gift of an open as I saved my best performance for the last game of the month. In what should have been an incredibly difficult game in a choppy choppy broad market, I lucked out with Goldman Sachs upgrading half a dozen home builders this morning. While I could have easily had my first $2000 day in six months, I wasn't aggressive enough with my size and did not take enough pullbacks. Still, with this lucky, lucky news event (as I made a combined $30 in everything else), I was able to secure my second appearence on firm's top 30 list (Number 23). If I can make that list once every week like I did last two weeks, I will know that my game truly is at another level. 10900 shares on 7 of 11 shooting, +1625 before commissions, +1380 after, pulled out $800 this week and closed the month with $7000, hopefully December will be better, this past week was absolutely brutal for me and without this lucky finish I would have had my first down week in a while. Stay tuned for the December journal. Pre-Market: Home builder upgrades, I quickly put together a list of all home builders with decent volume, wish I was a little more forgiving with the volume (300K a day), as those 100K a day stocks moved multiple points today with excellent volume and did not gap up much. Great news on HD. 9:30: A few home builders opened up more than 1 point on excellent open print volume. PHM opened down and I did not take it immediately. Open print was 37.25 and then offer actually stepped down, but it was just 200 shares and I should have bought 500 immediately (with another 500 ready to go depend on the fill), instead I waited a little, 400 shares later then he printed 37.45 as I put my market in, he filled me at 37.9! I pared out half immediately for a small loss but he eventually printed 38.5 where I got out of the rest. Should have made so much more there had I been a little more confident. Every homebuilder that gapped up had excellent open print and just kept on running, so I took some LEN at 36.65, pyramided into 700 and pared out 200-200-300 every quarter up. Had DHI at 26.74, bought more at 26.94 for 700, scored 70 cents there. All of this happend with futures going straight down, and I had that DNA flashback on Tuesday so I could not go in with 1000 and hold (what an awesome game that would have been). RLX was going up with strength and I had S at 45.65, stopped out for 10 cents and it went up half a point more. 10:00: Took DHI again on a pullback at 27, made 50 cents, wish I did the same thing for other home builders that pulled back as futures squeezed and they all made new high's. Didn't grab DOX/TER on that squeeze, there is a definite lack of aggression on my part when I saw my P&L at +1500, yet I don't stop shooting when I am down $1500, I guess I need to get used to bigger numbers until $1500 feels boring to me, then I can take it higher. Took CVS at 27 for a 15 cents scalp. 10:30: Very bad trade, took FMC at 53 and out for flat, it was an easy point I should have scored. I was playing scared, as I wanted to add to my P&L but afraid to lose it. Churned some SGY (this guy has been getting a tendency to go up at end of the day lately but do nothing during the day, going to definitely watchin him around 3PM now), tried to bottom pick EOG and churned, and missed the bottom when the seller finally finished. Time to go to the gym, with a 1500 day I felt I was stronger with weights too, even when I had a light flu. 2:00: I wanted to hold on to my 1500 but I also wanted to see if I could have added more to it. I kept my size small and tried CA when futures ripped, and the guy went down 30 cents! I held because there was no offer and managed to pull out for a 10 cents loss (as I bought a little more down there, very similar to the DNA trade, except this time there was no real volume and the futures was going up, and CA is nowhere near as volatile as DNA). 3:00: Thought futures had one more leg left, took some LEN/PHM/LXK, churned all three as like the way bears got ambushed at 3:30 yesterday, the bulls got killed with a sudden collapse on futures. In the end it was a big squeeze and I tried GE hoped for a last second bounce, no luck there and I am happy I only gave up $120 in the afternoon, acceptable loss given the potential to make more.
Congrats Hitman! Great day! BTW, what is the sector symbol for home builders? I couldn't find it on mobydata. Thanks!
Hitman i have never seen so much boring text in my life, why don't you write a book about yourself. What is your trading system if you even trade?
Hapaboy: There is no Home Builder index (I tried creating my own in First Alert and it is not very effective as I am the only one looking at it lol), that's why this group is a hard bread and butter sector to trade, any housing related news will have an impact on this, and it is possible to play laggers, but good tape work is a must as most stocks in this sector is rather thin and can spread you a new one if you are wrong. Candletrader: Sorry I didn't see your comment, I find it very difficult to trade off daily's effectively. I used to do nightly chart sessions but then I realized since I don't mind taking a quick scalp I would much rather take a quick look at the daily (as I can switch between 5 minute and daily on a single key press) when I am actually about to take the position. Here is what I find to be extremely difficult with daily's: 1) Stock went up a few day's in a row on good volume, potential breakout or potential Tony Oz sky scrapper? (Vice versa for shorts and bottomfisher) 2) The damn specialists always blow your stop around daily intersection points, every single time. For example, this morning, CVS broke yesterday's low, and that's precisely when I took a long as soon as I saw a BID, granted he didn't squeeze enough to be a spectacular trade but you can see it was clearly a stop blower. As a matter of fact I find stocks tend to bottom out slightly below support levels almost just as much as they continue to go down in this choppy market. 3) If you look at most futures sensitive sectors, they almost all look similar right now (CEX, XBD, SOX etc), right around a breakout point and chopping away, admitted, when a sector is up trending / down trending on the daily it is best to approach the intraday trading the same direction, but since I am very flexible whether it is taking a quarter or a half, it has never been a problem for me. The problem is to decide whether something is worth holding through the wiggles, and there just been way too many failed breakouts / breakdowns for me to take daily's into serious consideration. Bottomline, I just couldn't incorporate a strong daily game into my intraday game, I find sector index to be a lot more dominant for stocks within the sector. Granted, if I am long a full lot position and it is working really well, I would take a look on the daily to see if I should sell half and keep the other half through a wiggle, most of the times, it is just not worth it. Let's put it this way, the daily's I flip through during the day gives me a decent enough picture of the overall picture. I used to go through 100-200 charts a night, pick out half a dozen to a dozen set-ups, say I have a perfect shooting star for ADI, and what seems to be a breakout on NSM, next day, Nasdaq go up, both would work equally well as longs (in fact, ADI would be even a lower risk trade if day traders who saw the shooting star went short so it pulls back a little before the inevitable U turn and new high), Nasdaq go down, bullet either one, can't really go wrong. So daily is really something I don't look at until I have already took the position, my intraday chart has information from last 2-5 sessions and on that 5 minute chart I can get a decent picture already. Then again, if I ever find a reliable set-up on daily's that works with my intraday game, it will be fantastic. Right now, I just find daily formations tend to be unpredictable in intraday trading, as there is no telling whether the breakout will happen today or tommorrow or how long will it last for that matter. I don't normally look at it unless I notice a stock is really strong or weak. In the mean time, I am trying to get better with my news trading, I am absolutely amazed by the group leader and the way he trades news, incredible interpretation and it is no rocket science. On tough days like today, you really really really need some news in obscure stocks that day traders don't usually touch to win your game. A bottom-up approach really shines on a choppy day.