CM69: How about your stops? What criteria do you use to establish stop prices? What triggers your entry?
---- FLSH --> long at 46.56 / profit target 48.71 (2.15) with stops at 45.56 (1.00) LOGI --> long at 25.47 / profit target 27.47 (2.00) with stops at 24.30 (1.17) As you can see on my last two plays (still holding logi), my PT, and stops are pretty much at 1/2 risk/reward. I find 1/2 to be comfortable. I'm not real sure what you mean about what triggers my entry, so I hope this answers your question: I've stopped trying to call tops and bottoms, and now I trade gaps. I look for NASDAQ stocks that have gapped 1.00 or more with at least 400K average volume. I then buy into the direction of the gap. I learned that I should only buy into the gap on strong volume, if volume is not there, its a good short.
10/16 - 10/20 (4 day hold) Bought 100 FLSH @ 46.56 Sold 100 FLSH @ 39.40 profit - 730.00 after coms Lesson learned... dont buy into gaps with weak volume.
Dude, the lesson has nothing to do with gaps. The lesson is do your homework and don't buy in front of earnings unless you know exactly what you're doing (homework here on FLSH would have made you realized that SNDK had bot them and SNDK had earnings). The crash today had nothing to do with the gap on 10/16.
Why not wait for confirmation of the move. Use the high of the gap day to enter the trade the following day. You might miss the odd gap up on the second day but you wouldn't have had FLSH to deal with and LOGI would still be on your buy list. PS I have 20 / 20 hindsite.
Thats what I did with LOGI. I placed a buy stop .01 above the days high .40 above the current bid. I didn't think that it would regain strength so fast and my order got hit.
cash - my suggestion is that when you place an order out there (I use buy stop limits) you have to assume the order will get filled. If not, why bother placing the trade to begin with? If you are saying to yourself - I'll put this out there but it probably won't even fill - then don't place the trade.
I would have put in my buy stop at 25.60. 5 cents above the previous days high. If its going to keep going up it has to get by yesterdays high. What time frame are you trading in? 5 min charts or longer. Thats what I meant by trigger. Your trade triggered when it traded above the high of the day.
Biob I use daily and 60 min -- brown I'll take that advise. Can't make assumptions in trading... too many "what if's". cm69
GAP play (5 day hold) Bought LOGI @ 25.47 Sold LOGI @ 26.33 +.86 gain review I'm not too happy with this trade. I averaged .17 cents a day gain which is not good at all. This stock gaped on high volume, and I expected to make some mad money. The problem was I bought on the day of the gap, so most my time was sitting through a pullback...BORING!!!. If I had got in the day after the gap, my trade would have been much better. Trading gaps may prove to be more difficult that I had originally planned, but I'm hanging in there.