I wish I had a mentor / good trade like NoDoji in my company to give me these little hints and tips to polish of my trading....thats exactly what I need, because alot of times I make these silly mistakes and I have alot of success identifying or calling nice trades but never take advantage of them... Thanks so much NoDoji !!!!!!!
That's funny...just about everything NoDoji said I was about to say. Your entry signal was the break above the shallower pivot high and your stop was the shallower bottom pivot. You probably trade consistent size but if you wanted your R was $-to-risk / pivot h-pivot low=share size. ($ to risk = acct size * % risk). The reason why pivots are important is because that's where buyers have stepped in to support the market and will likely try to defend it again. THis particular bottom was more significant because it was a longer term higher bottom. Each bottom pivot is a bottom trying to be born. Same with top-pivots. Once the breakout happened trail a stop below one of the green bar lows or wait for a c below the MAs. PS What kind of moving averages are those?
Those were the 5 and 8 Period EMA's. Btw what was the "perfect" entry on this trade ? 8.40 ? At what time ?
Here's some sizing scenarios Risk 25% of daily max loss (Means you can put on 4 consec losing trades..you know your trading..bet accordingly). So with a .10 stop with a max daily loss of $100... .25 * $100 = $25 $25/.10 = 250 shares (means you can put on two consecutive losers) .50 * $100 = $50 $50/.10 = 500 shares I think the .25 is the way to go. Of course you can get larger position size by using a smaller stop. If you haven't already read Van Tharp trading your way to financial freedom. Best book on trading there is.
Here's some real advice. Find another strategy or move on. You'll never get anywhere trying to scalp thick semi conductor names like Micron using common technical analysis. And Level II these days is beyond useless, I basically ignore it unless I'm looking for some large size to take. Anything you read on the internet about how to take advantage of level 2 went out of date a few years back.
"Btw what was the "perfect"" The "pefect entry" could have been several places (in hindsight) but a high probability entry could have been 1. When you saw the market finding support. What was the SPY doing? Was it getting ready to rally? If you saw in TS and LII the market finding support This would have allowed you to get your stop as close to that pivot as possible. This is the most aggressive play. 2. The safer play would have been to wait for the break above the pivot you pointed out as NoDoji explained. 3. Wait for the trend to develop. Notice that there were many points while the bars were above the MAs and there were many green bars and many red bars. You need momentum for this to work though. The trend clearly needs to be running strong. LII and tape reading can help with that.
Trading is a process, its part skill, part knowledge and part intuition. You are getting in too early, getting out too soon because you have not developed the confidence necessary in your trading too succeed. Be patient, keep proding, keep at it and you may succeed. Good luck.
You're welcome! I too wish I had a live mentor. Considering the tuition I paid in losses... I still make the same silly mistakes. I short a lower high, then suddenly realize a) oops, it previously made a higher low and I missed that, b) it's later in the day, and c) there's still a major resistance level that will likely be tested as a result of that higher low because that's what ALWAYS seems to happen later in the day. Another "oh sh*t, what'd I do that for?" moment. And that's what stops are for