First of all, congrats. Very good trades. Need to ask a couple of questions. 1) How do you base your stop loss ie is it 2% of cost (stock price) or base on the stop offset method (trendline) that Jack & Spydertrader suggest. 2) Are most of your trades initiated in the afternoon? 3) Notice that you tend to exit your trades at good prices ie if you have shorted the stock, you tend to cover at almost the lowest point of the day. I suspect that you exited once the price could not go lower and the price is no longer in the intraday downward channel. But price sometimes come out of their downward channel only to reenter the channel and go lower. So how do you decide whether to cover now (ie buy back the stock) or wait to see whether price will continue lower. In your recent cases, you certainly nailed the 'bottom' when you exited out of your short positions. However, my thoughts are that sometimes by exiting almost immediately once price meanders out of the channel may cost us a lot of $ if the day happens to be a range day. [In my case, if I had shorted those stocks, I would have most likely held on much longer before exiting the short positions--thus getting much lesser profits][ PS: I'm ignoring the $trin here which would have given me a heads up to exit my short position in the stocks] Thanks
Missed out 1 more question. Do you use tape reading, Level II or $trin or $tick to help in deciding when to enter the trades? Your 'entry points' are very similar to how I will enter them myself. I am able to spot these in real time. However, I'm not profitable and you are. Sigh.
1. I use the stop offset method to size my positions, and as emergency exit. My positions are usually closed manually. 2. I trade any time of the day. 3. If the setup and entry conditions show that the expected move is exhausted, or if my entry was not confirmed, then I exit. 4. I don't use tape reading, Level II or $trin or $tick. My expectancy and win / loss ratio are good, so the more I trade following my rules, the higher my probability of making money. I won't trade all the charts I'll post here. It is a scrapbook intended to include more pictures than words.
AAPL ss 59.2 entry / eod <img src=http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=1098115><img src=http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/1332/aapl6060910d30meod2ye.gif>
AKAM ss 30.07 entry / eod <img src=http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=1098117><img src=http://img83.imageshack.us/img83/8117/akam6060910d30meod5ki.gif>
BA ss 80.42 entry / eod <img src=http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=1098118><img src=http://img83.imageshack.us/img83/7315/ba6060910d30meod8tz.gif>
BRCM ss 29.36 entry / eod <img src=http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=1098119><img src=http://img83.imageshack.us/img83/1793/brcm6060910d30meod5ik.gif>
DIA ss 108.86 entry / eod <img src=http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=1098120><img src=http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/8374/dia6060910d30meod8ms.gif>