Uneventful day for the most part and even FFIV was partially closed out before I woke up today. FFIV was just killed today for anyone that did not watch after hours trading last night. For those that did watch and try to catch the falling knife at the closing of after hours trading they were handsomely rewarded just like with CREE the day before. FFIV was way oversold (as well as overbought before) in my opinion. FFIV was not able to trade and stay above the open today so that is somewhat bearish to me but FFIV remains a growing company in a space that I feel is growing long term. I think the best days of FFIV are yet to come. DDS gave me a Laurel short signal multiple times and then a William signal. I built up a short with it and then it retraced much of the way back giving me a small gain. It then went up again to the point I was underwater but as it did not reach target I felt comfortable reshorting and was more aggressive with it. I left a lot on the table as usual with these types of trades as they often just keep falling. I have yet to try to figure out when they tend to go way past my target and when they just make it. If this pattern continues I will have to start working on a probability table (too soon now as the sample size that I know of is too small without some serious time spent on code). ICOP (currently a penny stock trading on the OTCBB) the short I held before appears to be defaulting on rent and may get kicked out of their location. Not that it appears they will need all the space they have right now as they laid off all the staff. They also released a notice that they received a letter from First Growth Capital declaring ICOP in default of several covenants which ICOP disputes. This trade is not for 99% of traders and while I believe and stated before that this company has a value of zero the OTCBB is a place to avoid for almost everyone. I reshorted and will hold out again and see where this stock goes. Nothing to crazy just in case they get a winning lotto ticket (like a large PO by some government agency) that buys them some time / provides working capital. DDS + 918 FFIV + 2076 + 2995
I will say this has a lot of the feel of the start of 2009 for me. Hitting on all cylinders right now. At this rate I will be banging some serious numbers this summer Next thing I need to do is write a book. Not really sure how to go about doing that though......(well beyond the part of getting an editor to fix my grammar etc....) maybe that would be a good 2012 project after I post a 600% return for the year.....LOL Call it the "Learn how to be a stay at home day trader so you don't take a bath in the market and you don't have to take a shower everyday" book. oh i am funny sometimes Best RW
Banging out some nice numbers there RW! I did as well the 1st week but reality set in and back to the grind..sigh I know you trade/watch CREE...how do you feel about an intermediate (next few months) bullish trade in CREE?? thanks RR
Today was a great day even if it didnât feel like it. options expiration day and while I am normally very busy I made a choice to stay out of the market unless big fat easy targets presented themselves. So my trading resulted in a covering of some ICOP(penny stock) and one gap up fade. I also sold some MTG puts that expire in Feb but I kept that small. COCO was my biggest winner today and I didnât even trade it today. Lots of 4 and 5 dollar puts that I wrote expired today. I do not include IRA results in this journal but the IRA gains today far outweigh what I gained in the trading account. I will baring some material change over the weekend initiate new COCO put shorts in both my trading account and my IRS accounts. PLCM + 133 gap up fade ICOP + 17 COCO $5 Jan C + 38 COCO $5 Jan P + 103 + 291
Thanks !! Trading is going pretty well. It is always fun being the hero but that 'zero' thing is a buzz kill I am glad to hear that your started out on the right foot. I sure here you about the grind part. This week has been a grind for me as well. Currently I am mostly watching COCO MTG and ADGF. Cree does look to have found the bottom and with the reversal yesterday and the follow through today I think the odds are for a test of the high of the gap down bar shortly. I was looking at going long either MTG or CREE and I ended up shorting puts in MTG because of the premium vs risk was better for me. As I look at it again I should have went long on Friday and yesterday as that is the mirror of my short gap up signal. As we move out beyond a few days my crystal ball gets pretty cloudy. My best guess and it really is not more than a guess is that CREE while finding a bottom will need to get some solid footing before making any meaningful move back north of the 200MA. With that being said "all gaps fill" or so they say. If I was to buy this one I would be doing it by (provided the numbers justify) selling puts to hedge against time and the massive volatility that CREE now has. I hope this is of some value to you Best Robert
Not much to report today as it was one of the slowest trading days in a long time COCO continued higher today and I remain long with a target of $9+. MTG fell during the first half of the day only to reverse and close higher than the open. I find this very bullish and expect to see it move higher. As this was the fifth day down in a row including a major move down to start with it appeared to be a likely reversal point. When MTG was trading near 8.50 I sold Feb $8 strike price puts to fade the sell off. Even with the Feb $9 puts I sold earlier I am still relatively tiny in MTG. MTG is part of my continued advance forward in writing more option premium. I hope to ramp up size and issues as actual trading mimics back testing and theory. I did have a tiny gain today but mostly spent time reading and working on finding HP workstations so that I can add another bank of computers for a new scan that I have developed and to replace my trading machine which will soon be a scanning machine. With the next bank of scanners this should bring the total to around 12 computers scanning during trading hours. HOG was the only signal and it was not much of one with a B7 that didnât confirm. I sold the very top of the move so I did not get any size on the trade. At least I was able to get my target. I hope to get some signals tomorrow and the rest of the week. So far this week I am eating bread and water at this rate. HOG + 84 William B7 SLE + 65 GLW + 4 ETH + 25 + 179
Bob, it was great to visit your room today and watch you kicking butt. I was especially amazed at how you could drive the price of oil exactly where I wanted it to go while trading all those stocks. I don't care what the naysayers say, the magic words still work!
Yup, slow in terms of trading. I have lots of things to do but I like trading as it is a great excuse to procrastinate things I don't want to do. : o ) Best RW