Today was my first day trading dummies (which doesn't look like dummy trading anymore but the basic idea is still there) with real $$$. Overall a good day with 42c in LPL and $1 in KWK. I actually covered LPL too soon (as I type it's still going). Small losses in GNSS, KR, FTO and SWY after failed setups. FTO was actually entered by mistake as I made a commitment not to trade oil related stocks.
ilganzo... "Quicksilver Resources, Inc., an independent oil and gas company, engages in the exploration, acquisition, development, production, and sale of natural gas, crude oil, and natural gas liquids in the United States and Canada."
Point well taken, in normal conditions I wouldn't trade energy stocks. I saw the strong action with good prints this morning and I didn't hesitate to go long but I was just lucky not to notice the stock sector and to go through the pullback that affected most oil stocks after 10:00.
Good trade today in ADBE, in at 36.13 out at 37.07. The 15min chart printed a hammer and price action was strong. Lost 7c in HDI trying to play a reversal: it was holding at the 1.00 Fibonacci extension level (52.65) and noticed a long tail at 10:15. That set me on the wrong track. I haven't been very succeful playing reversals. Any help much appreciated.
Perfect example of what not to do: because of the quite day and very few stocks trading above avg. volumes, I forced this trade in LRCX without waiting for NR. 11c loss: shorted at 35.89, covered 36.00.
Hi folks, nice reading and nice trades. Just a suggestion to use as a filter. What happens if you only trade those dummies candles that show an inside bar and also acontraction of volume ? The rational being: at this price there's a temporary uncertainity of direction (people are not able to make up their mind ), if this price action is accompanied by a relative low volume, usually the following move in one direction is very strong. I didn?t have time to go through charts to verify whether this is a good filter. I bet most of the inside candles are low relative volume though. So maybe it's not a proper filter to eliminate bad entries. Time to backtest
This will be my last post to the thread as the set of rules I'm following doesn't follow the original dummy methodology anymore, although the main idea is still there. Over the last month I traded a total of 197 setups averaging 2c/per share traded (4c on a round trip). The percentage of winners is 50% with the average loser at -5c/pst and the average winner at 8c/pst. You can find a detailed record of all my trades in the attached document. All trades from 12/5 are real. After the first 2 weeks on the simulator I made a commitment to reduce my average loss (at that point it was standing at 5.4c/pst) and I managed to bring that number down to 4.5c/pst but i'm now realizing focus should be on the % winners as risk is already very tight. Performances decreased considerably last week after the VIX went under 10.5. I'm thinking not to trade the strategy until the vix returns to a value of 11 or higher. Thanks to everybody who posted on this thread, I found a lot of useful information here. I'll answer questions if anybody is interested in my experience over the last month. Cheers, ilganzo
Had some luck with INSU. Bought 1000 at 22.84 and got out at 23.64. A little concerned about the big gap up, but if it gravitates back towards it, might be a decent short. Anyone else?