Aug 22, 2007

AKS - Long

I had a tough time today with my exit strategy. Exiting off the 5-min sometimes gets me out of trades too early (and sometimes with a loss). Honestly, I felt like I put in a 10-hour shift to make my money today. Here's the trade (15-min):

  • Placed fibs. from first bar low to second bar high
  • Price never closed below the 50% level
  • I liked the long lower tails on bars 3-5
  • Entered long off a break of the 7th bar high (hammer-like) on increased volume
  • Exited off the 5-min chart about 9 cents below the fib. ext.

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

Did you have problems with prophet's scans today ? It seems the gap filter did not work.

OONR7 said...

Well, there weren't a lot of candidates but I just threw them in together with my IB scan so I really can't tell if they were messed up. I did have a problem with prophet's backfill today. I had to resort to IB's datafeed which was extremely slow.

Anonymous said...

Mine did not work at all. No result unless I removed the gap filter. I ended up using the free Java Yahoo screener which would be perfect if you could sort by volume.

OONR7 said...

yeah... before I was an IB customer, I used to use the same Yahoo scanner in emergencies. I also hated that you couldn't sort by volume. What broker do you use?

Jerry said...

oonr7 - Fast trade and fast money.
Does IB's datafeed always act slow?

greytrader - same here, but other percent gainer work fine.

Anonymous said...

I use Etrade Pro, not much scanning ability but otherwise a good platform.

Anonymous said...

Jerry, are you a basic member with prophetstream like me or do you have a premium membership (silver or gold)?

Jerry said...

I am a free member, as basic as one can be. Maybe this is why scanner sometime don't work. LOL

OONR7 said...

jerry... I've used IB's datafeed twice in the last month or so and it has been slow both times. I remember Esto telling me that a long time ago.

greytrader: if there's any piece of advice that I hope you take away from my blog... I hope it is this: Dump Etrade Pro and move to a per share broker. I highly recommend Interactive Brokers. Trust me, when you only pay .005 per share, it changes the way you trade. You can scale in and out without it hurting your bottomline. Also, IB gives you interest on your balance so they're practically paying for some of your commissions as well. Believe me, I used to be an Etrade Pro member (I still have a savings account there that offers 5% which is sweet), but for trading, it sucks.
You're not using Etrade for charting too, are you? I never liked their charts and that's why I originally subscribed to prophet.
In any case, if you want more info about IB, feel free to ask. But I don't think you'll find anyone disagreeing with me here about how great that switch would be.

OONR7 said...

I'm a silver member and I just figured that the quotes are delayed unless you're a silver or above subscriber. Have you guys found that to be the case? Delayed quotes, that is.

Anonymous said...

oonr7,

I was going to move from Etrade but they offered me $4.99 a trade which is the same as IB for 1000 shares and cheaper for more than 1000 shares. I usually trade 1000+ and I do not really scale in and out much (I probably should :-)

I also get Nasdaq Totalview for free. Their charts suck and I was using TC2000 Platinum up until last week. After trying out QT, I will probably switch.

For 2000 shares, I will pay 9.98 with Etrade vs 20$ with IB. Maybe I will open an IB account and try it out.

For Prophet, I am on the prophetstream trial and I was getting realtime data on ProphetScan up until today. I do not really need the data so I might switch to Silver. Etrade data is fine with QT.

Jerry said...

Prophet free member is 15 min delayed. Stock may have moved higher before is showed up on your scanner.

Anonymous said...

oonr7,

Do you use QT to enter your orders or the IB platform ?

OONR7 said...

grey: The $4.99 is a good deal, especially if you trade very large lots. However, 2000 shares in IB is only $10 (.005 times 2000). I never used to partial out my trades in Etrade just because it really hit my pnl. With IB, I can partial for practically nothing.
Also, I just flat out like the IB platform better than Etrade. Took some getting used to, but it's very nice.
I actually still keep a minimum balance with them so I can use their data from time to time. QT has had some data issue with Etrade but I think they worked out the kinks in the new QT versions.
In any case... just something to think about but since you have $4.99 per trade, that's not bad.

OONR7 said...

grey: I use the IB platform. QT has an option for IB ordering, but it's kind of a preset thing, not very flexible. My share size varies from trade to trade.

Anonymous said...

oonr7: Do you pay data fees with IB for Total View etc... ?

Thank you for all this info, I am playing with their Java Platform demo right now.

OONR7 said...

no... I chose the option that comes standard. Also, not sure if they've changed it, but they used to charge extra if you wanted to place a specific direct access routed order. And their conditional orders (bracketed and such) are also extra. IB doesn't charge for that. I remember the difference was like $5 per trade.
I'm actually not sure if they have Totalview... I imagine so.
Another nice feature they have is that you can set up a duplicate, virtual workstation and trade in realtime on a dummy account. It's a nice way to get used to the platform or test a new strategy.
Glad I can help in any way.

LP said...

Hey I was a bigger whuss than you and completely blew this trade. Right thinking wrong exit.

OONR7 said...

flatwallet: You callin' me a wuss??? :)