No magic trick

Couldn't pull a rabbit out my hat today as I haven't seen any great setups on my watchlist - as of right now.

I did manage to make a decent gain shorting SIGM off the 2nd bar low (15-min) and then selling before the huge upward turn (touched and consolidated at the fib. ext. from yesterday's high).

COGN - Long

The anatomy of 1.08R trade (COGN):

5-min chart

• Entered on a break of the 10am bar high which was an inside nr7 bar with drastically reduced volume (contraction) right at the intraday 38.2% fib. level
• After being up 3R quickly, I ended up partialing out and then getting stopped out for an .8R loss

15-min chart

• This is a trade I wish I didn't make. I tried to get all Trader-X like
• Entered on break of the 10:45 bar high which was an inside nr7 hammer right at the ORH (with fibs. drawn from yesterday's low)
• Exited for a full 1R loss 2 bars later

30-min chart

• Yes, you read correctly, I traded the 30-min chart. I actually studied a lot this weekend and I'm going to start looking at the 30-min chart for inside bar opportunities
• Entered on a break of the 6th bar high after bars 4 and 5 formed inside bars. Bar 6 was also an nr7 with increased volume right at the ORH and very close to the 5ema
• I exited on what is looking like the top of the move (as I write this at 3pm) at 50.35... it was getting late over here and I was happy to take a 2.88R gain

I also traded ABAT which is a more traditional trade for me

• Entered long on a break of the 6th bar high which was an nr7, closed above the 38.2% fib. level and sat on top of R2
• While the entry was pretty, the exit wasn't and after noticing resistance at the ORH in bars 8 and 9 I decided to just exit at the ORH with a gain

No movement

Some pretty boring stuff the last two days. Entered NVDA and made some cash, but there was really no follow through.

No trades

Didn't see anything interesting and decided to go get some Lebanese food in Paris. Had a great dinner with a friend that's in town. Hope to have some better setups tomorrow. There were actually a few times today that I thought my connection was down because price seemed to stall.

I did a stupid thing...

I was long DISH - that's not the stupid part - and I decided to sell all my shares at R2 (that's the stupid part). I should've partialed at R2 and I think greed got the best of me as I entered the trade and 15 minutes later I was up a nice amount (and this is early in the morning). Not wanting to give any early morning profits back, I figured I'd just sell all and if the stock jumped up a bit afterwards... I'd deal with it. Well, it 'jumped' up $4.6 from my exit. If I would've partialed... I'd be up another +9R. This isn't hingsight... partialing is what I should've done. But anyway, here's the trade (a Jaime-inspired trade):

• Everyday, I look at Jamie's watchlist and watch for good opportunities forming at a pivot levels. DISH was a great candidate today
• Entered long off a break of the 2nd bar high (hammer-like) right above R1
• Price took off and my original target was R2 where I ended up selling all my shares and watched (with a tear in my eye) as price skyrocketed upwards
• Pissed I missed the big move, I also shorted this stock off the 11:50 bar low on the 5-min chart and made some additional money which helped
• A big thanks to Jamie for sharing his watchlist.
• I also traded CREE for some change
  

NOK - Short

I made money today and that's all that counts. Did a make a crapload?? No. Took two trades which were both profitable but the end result was only 1R. 1R... doesn't sound like much - and it really isn't - but it's also not -1, -2 or -3R. It's a positive result and that's the bottomline. I try to shoot for average and hope to get a couple of runners during the week. Haven't gotten the runners yet, but they will come. I actually contemplated entering BIDU on the 10-min chart (11:20 bar), but passed because the high/low spread was almost $2. A little too rich for my tastes. I think $1 spread is the maximum amount I'm willing to go and that still needs to be around 1% of the closing price. I traded CAL (Jamie-inspired trade) and NOK. Here's the NOK trade:

• As you can see, price gapped down but then immediately started moving up
• Price hit a brick wall at $37.50 and proceed to sharply decline
• The 10 and 10:05 bar had nice volume on the decline which made me forget about the rise at the open
• The 10:10 bar offered a brief pause in the decline and this is where price should've gone back up if it was going to
• Entered short on a break of the 10:20 bar low with the fib. ext and S1 as the price target
• Price moved down without a problem and I was able to exit at S1 with no problems... pretty smooth

PHM - Long

With PHM, I entered based on my criteria but then exited using Trader-X-style fib. lines from yesterday's low. I do this from time to time if price moves strongly towards my intraday price target and I want to see what the next 'logical' price target may be by using more extended fib. lines. I really wanted to get into this trade for some reason. I liked how it was basing along the intraday 38.2% fib. level. I thought the huge volume spike would cause the price to move down - which it did momentarily - but then it picked up again and I entered on another inverted hammer... fast becoming my favorite type of entry. Also notice how price set up along R2.
 
Entry (15-min):

 
Exit