Thanks for posting your trades live, this is quite interesting. One thing I've noticed is that you're doing a lot of "bounce plays". I've been trying bounce plays myself and haven't had much luck (on paper mostly). What is your ratio of winners to losers? More importantly, what criteria do you use to initiate a bounce? I tried using bollinger, stochastics, SMA crossovers, etc without enough success to get me to try it live. I would really appreciate any insight. Thanks again and please continue to post.
I have done bounce plays only the past few days, and for the prior few weeks, I was short. As I am now focused mostly on the major indices and their proxies, QQQ, SPY, SMH, DIA. My recent trades were the QQQs was entered last week at 29 and the SMH calls on friday. My indicators were principally the VIX, which behaved similarly to recent bounces and Mcclellen oscillator, which was oversold, as well as a measured move in the SOX. But the market did not accomodate this view and bounce today and I won't wait around much longer. My longer term view is to get more heavily short after a bounce.
I left out the KLAC trade. KLAC went down 3-1/2 points after hours when INTC lowered guidance. I did a quick calculation with implied volatility for the KLAC options and the 3.5 points was the distance of movement in one day that reached a 2.0 volatility band for KLAC. According to research by a trader at tradingmarkets.com - K. Haggerty - the 2.0 band has a 95% probability of producing a counter reaction. I bought after hours because at 19-1 odds, and that it was a "fallout" issue (not the subject of the news), and that it was close to support, I did not wait for confirmation the next morning, which I could not have done because I can't any longer monitor closely intraday trading. The stock was really stretched, and was a good candidate for a bounce.
Short 500s EXPE 64.90 daytrade OMC: bot 56.46 sold 58.40 400s stopped daytrading but could not resist this.