May 14, 2008

STP - Long

Had a pretty good day today and only made one mistake in BHP (10:40/5... don't ask). Caught some nice moves with CVLT and STP. I figured I'd showcase STP since it's a little different from my normal trades. STP opened strong and made a nice move to R2. I waited for price to fall back down to the ORH but it start basing. I entered off a break of the 11:45 bar high which was an inside NR7 (that followed an inside NR7). I really wanted to enter on the previous candle but my order never triggered. Anyway, I always try to look for entries along strong support or resistance areas (such as ORH/L) and R2 presented just that today. I exited just short of the fib. ext. for a nice. gain.




10 comments:

greytrader said...

Nice.

What was your exit on CVLT ?

OONR7 said...

gt: thanks... partialed at 11.62 and sold the rest at 11.45.

PDT said...

Nice trade on STP.

You mentioned you really wanted to enter off of the first NR7. Didn't it bother you that it wasn't a very strong candle. It is sort o hammer-like but it still closed weak.

Also what was your trigger bar on CVLT? 12:00pm hammer?

PDT said...

What was your reasoning for partialing at $16.62? Obvioulsy it was a good time, but I am wondering what you saw. Thanks

OONR7 said...

pdt: thanks. For STP... with NR7s I'm not concerned about upper/lower wicks or really whether they close green or red. They are strong candles at the right location (areas of support/resistance). I should have also noted the bullish flag pattern that formed during my entry.
As for CVLT, I entered off the 5-min chart, 11:45 bar. Why did I partial at 11.62??? Well, not a great answer there except that I was very happy with my gain and wanted to make sure I brought home a significant share of profit. My price target was 16.90 and partialing at that point wouldn't have really cost me too much cash had it indeed reached the price target. However, it didn't and price feel back down. Estocastica used to refer to this as trader's 'intuition'. Sometimes you just feel a move is about to happen. Sometimes you guess correctly... sometimes you don't.
Plus, volume wasn't exactly pouring into the stock and that made me uneasy.

PDT said...

Good ol intuition. I need to work on that ;)

Would you mind explaining the bullish flag pattern you saw. I am not seeing it.

OONR7 said...

pdt: the 11:15 bar had a wide range and closed strong... the two following bars closed within that range and in the upper half. Maybe not prototypical bull flag but close enough.

Anonymous said...

o
what was your biggest drawdown in R's since you became consistently profitable?
a

OONR7 said...

tradera: with stocks... it's never been more than 3R. My biggest drawdown actually occurred earlier this year when I traded futures... about 6R or so. That was tough. Fortunately, I made about 3R back the next day. I still like futures but I'm doing much better with equities. The thing is, even on a bad day, I usually have at least one winner that helps prevent a really bad day.

OONR7 said...

tradera: I should add that I did well in futures up till that point and, overall, I was profitable with all my futures trades. However, the 'strategy' that I was using wasn't quite holding up from a consistency point of view. I feel I'm much more consistent trading equities.