Today felt more normal for the first time in a while I still had some major challenges though and AMSC gave me a run for my money. I would guess a lot of shorts were just crushed today as that stock kept moving higher and higher. Even my twitter alert would have been painful for anyone that went to large with it to soon. The Treasury auction went better today sending rates lower. At the time of this post which is at the end of the trading day for stocks the Tres futs are at the HOD. If the rates go low enough like they were when I was in Nevada I will be looking to add to my short. I had some good trades and I am still working on getting my total balance back to my trading. Its amazing how long its taking to get confidence to its fullest level. Today was a good step in that direction and I can see getting up to full speed at this rate pretty fast. opening Gaps WYNN + 116 Rest of the bunch AMSC + 1779 HBI + 128 (did not get full target) LAZ + 341 UTHR + 361 After hours FSLR (wow what action that one had. 30 point moves. YES 30 points ) + 3193 Day - 102944 Month
For the most part it was an uneventful day. I did trade SYNA to the long side which is unusual for me. SYNA was just pounded today for guiding lower than expected. It did have higher earnings this quarter and the PE is respectable but the street did not like the thought of lower future earnings. Way over done IMHO and I expect a bounce next week. Value investors will be looking at SYNA this weekend and thinking its on sale.(I guess you could say that I am value investing in it as well at this point). You could just feel the panic as the selling went on and on. Big turn over in shares as well. SYNA â 37 TEN started out pretty good after its run up I shorted near the top. It just didnt want to fall much and I closed out near the close so that I would not have to carry over the weekend. TEN + 103 AMED was my real winner today. I sold very near the top of the move and it fell hard and fast shortly after. I was even able to get more than target on the gain so it was pretty much text book on how I like to trade. AMED + 1636 Treasury futures came back strong today. this was on top of dollar weakness and for most of the day a stronger market and higher oil. Very strange and it looked like something would have to give. In the end the market lost its gains and in after hours trading is about even. I am still short the 30 yr futs but have given up some of the gains as I wait out the option hedge to have greater time decay. + 1702 Day - 101242 Month + 75768 year
Bob, Nice trading! Hey, check out HURN and let me know when you think it's "on sale". It looked inviting at 20.00, but now it's below 19.00 :eek: :eek: :eek: NoD
Hey NoDoji, I hope your trading is going well. By looking at your PnL from your journal today it appears this year is going very well. We missed you in the chat today. I think that at least one person even needed a tissue at times. : o ) Its hard to get my head wrapped around going long HURN this soon. the CEO just got the boot and they are restating earnings for multiple years. The stock appears to be doing about what it should in this case and I don't see much of an edge trying to get in at this level (currently at 19.10 as I write this in AH trading) maybe late in the day Tuesday after some of the dust settles and no more bad news comes out. Even then I probably would avoid it unless it gets just stupid cheap (its no where near that here) Have a great weekend Bob
Pretty good day today The dollar fell out of bed today sending gold and oil higher. Oil moved up over $2 bringing it over 71 and it was only about a week ago that there was talk of sub $60 oil due to stockpiles adding up. as a result my short in the 30 yr futs went back into the strong positive again after the 30 yr rates went down on Friday. Still holding waiting for the time premium to run out. My carryover long from Friday with SYNA worked out well. I really like this stock and while it has some fleas (what stock doesnt) I am holding some for a longer term gain. Its not very often I like being long but this one I feel is on sale and I partially hedged my holdings by writing calls against it. SYNA + 1117 I had a couple of nice signals today but kept my size very small and stayed conservative. OSK + 1183 CTRP + 1078 Ended up just scalping HURN to the short side after my short took a stop loss to protect the gain. + 24 + 3404 Day / week / Month
Today was a hurry up and wait kind of day I had several trades today and for the most part they worked out well. I stayed small and was hitting the tops pretty well. I did have a trade in regular hours trading (I also had an after hours trade) that really moved against me but didnât get to crazy. TDG is normally a pretty low volume stock that reported good earnings. It moved up strongly today and I started shorting it a bit early in relation to the move. TDG did finally fall back and I covered much of the trade near BE when time was running out in the day. I did want to get more than just BE so I am carrying overnight the rest. WYNN + 425 TRW + 1147 TDG + 171 (still short) HOT + 507 BKD + 676 In afterhours trading I shorted WFMI after their earnings report. I thought I had waiting for the bulk of the move to be over but I ended up still being a little early and it never retraced enough to get the target gain. Still short as I write this and expect to hold overnight. As its up over 13% and i would trade this at the open at this price anyway I am somewhat comfortable with the hold. The latest numbers on the short interest show its heavily shorted so I am thinking there is some risk to the hold. The news is out though and this has the pattern of topping out on the good news IMHO so all in all I still expect to get a nice gain and may even see it before the AH trading closes up tonight. Someone is showing 8K shares at 28 as I write this on the bid so thatâs interesting. Very big bid to be showing at this hour in trading. I have also seen some 5K bids earlier get eaten up so it may be a real buyer. My new longer hold with SYNA is doing well and about where I expected it to be today. That in itself is good and will just sit on it. + 2928 Day + 6332 Week / Month
Another day of scalping and another day of losses. Once again I was schooled in why I should not scalp stocks. I looked at AIG being up over 40% and thought I would be able to scalp it for 5-10 cents a pop as it was moving real well. Then it moved higher and instead of getting out right away I waited until the worst time to get out with stop losses. There are so many ways to lose money in the market and it seems at times I go out to look for them. One good thing is that many of the holes in my trading has been plugged up and while I do have gains most of the time scalping stocks (including a few hundred with AIG at one point today) I will just pass on trying to scalp stocks in the future. This will free up a lot of time and hopefully will improve my PnL at the end of the year. AIG â 22800 WFMI was my hold over from AH trading yesterday. It didnât work out all that well and took a hit with it and closed out in early trading. WFMI â 3828 TDG was my signal hold over from yesterday that I made some gains with but wanted to hold for greater gains on some of the trade. It didnât give me much either and so I closed it out pretty early in the day. TDG + 174 So all in all it was a pretty ugly day. I will once again be now shifting into a lower gear and trade smaller amounts of shares to protect capital as well as limit trades to signals. - 26454 Day - 20122 Week / Month
First off let me say I have enjoyed your journal since it started. It's great for other traders to see your ups and downs. Over three years ago I was fading all strong moves. It was great for the most part and I was able to make some good money. Unfortunately I had big draw down days that set me back weeks or even months. After a year of trading like this I couldn't take the pain anymore and decided to trade with the trend and set some better risk management. Since then I have been consistently profitable and am very glad I began trading with the trend. I am not saying fading moves is not a profitable strategy, it just seems like you need better risk management so that one down day doesn't destroy a week or month of profits. Just wanted to share my 2 cents from personal experience. Stay smart.
I didn't know one could lose 22k through scalping in one day. You have to trade in very very very large sizes to incur such losses.
Until very recently I feared the trend because I had no idea when it was "safe" to become part of it, or to catch it early on. I've spent the past couple of months studying trend trading, catching trends, when it's safe to counter-trend, etc., because my largest losses were fighting trends and I thought to myself "If I'd gone long there instead of short I'd be up $6000, not underwater." I've found some of the largest moves come from breaks through the day's high on trending or consolidating stocks. I've found the best countertrend trades are the ones confirmed by a lower high or a higher low. I also know Robert's method of scaling into a position to fade a strong move can be an ATM machine, and minus HAR and ANR (overnights) his YTD return would incredible. I think the only safe position size to hold overnight is 500 shares or less and after watching HURN the other day, even that size is iffy :eek: