PMI - Short ; PTR - Long

Finally... charts worthy enough to post. Feels like ages since I did that. Anyway, the 'new' stuff I've been working on involves inside bars and declining volume. I've been spending a good amount of time going back on my charts to look for inside bar entries and I find them to be very reliable and powerful. Also, tracking the 5, 10 and 15-min charts are too time-consuming and I'm leaning towards eliminating the 5-min chart from the scan list and just concentrating on the 10 and 15 (like I did today). Scanning all my charts every 3 minutes gives me a headache... despite the successes. Plus, if I can find a good move on the 15 or 10 and plot the fib. lines from yesterday's low I should get a nice price target.

Why the change? Well, I just mentioned one reason... trading on the 5-min timeframe is heavy on the brain. I was also ready for a philosophical change regarding volume. After seeing trade after trade on Jamie's site involving low volume plays on inside bars... it became apparent to me that I need to look into it. Finding a narrow-range, low volume inside bar at a key support or resistance area can often act as either a reversal point or a brief consolidation before a further move in the prevailing trend. And the biggest reason for the change is... opportunity. A trader's best friend is finding plenty of opportunities every day. I don't take advantage of every single one - for good or bad - but I'd rather have missed opportunities than limited opportunities.

I'm rambling... let's talk about today's trades. I took PMI short and PTR long.

PTR (15-min)

• Price quickly rose above the ORH then settled down to find support
• Entered on a break of the 8th bar high which was the second of two inside bars on declining volume. Since the spread on this candle was $3 (I usually don't enter candles with that kind of spread but the entry was too good to pass up and I said WTF). I didn't grab a ton of shares but the price target was $6 above at $261 so I could make a nice profit AND keep my risk the same
• Price ended up pegging the fib. ext. a couple bars later which is approximately where I exited

PMI (10-min)

• Used the 15-min ORH for my fib. lines (I will be doing this from now on, just simpler)
  
• Watched price steadily rise on declining volume with upper tails forming near the intraday 50% fib. level (I draw the intraday fib. levels first with all my stocks then adjust once they get close to their ORH or ORL)
• Entered short on a break of the 8th bar low (I actually wanted to enter on a break of the 7th bar low but it didn't materialize. However, the 8th bar was just as nice and also an inside bar)
• Price moved sluggishly downward and until the big one bar drop at 1:20. This bar came very close to the fib. ext. and I should exited near the fib. ext. but missed it. I sold all shares on the next bar at $26.10 on the way up

You name it....

It got chopped. As Eyal mentioned... it was chop city today. I traded WERN, SVU and KEY. Only SVU made me some money.

New stuff

Been trying out some new things and today didn't seem to be a very rewarding day. I was in UNG right below the ORH (10-min chart) but then got stopped out (small risk size). It then proceeded to move up. Also saw a lot of countergap trades. Hope everyone did well.

No trades

Second straight day I was looking at CELG on a break of the 2nd bar and the 2nd straight day I passed. Although today I just didn't feel like there was a big volume surge to warrant my entry. Nothing else gave me a compelling reason to enter. So, while it was boring... I feel like I was fairly wise to stay out. Looking forward to next week.

MDG - Long; RT - Short

By a show of hands, how many of you have been staring at the monitor, waiting for a setup only to be distracted or get tired and move on to something else... but when you get back to that same stock the setup you were originally looking for happened during the exact time you were away from the computer? Nice... I see about 5,000 hands. That happened with WX today (at the 1:15 bar on the 15-min chart). Breathe in.... breathe out.
It's not so bad as I had success with MDG and RT today. Here are the charts:

MDG - typical OONR7 play (haven't seen much of those lately).

• Entry above the 38.2% fib. level (nr7 bar with volume) and right above R2
• Exit at intraday fib. ext

RT - very nice Trader-X trade (finding more of these lately)

• Entry below the ORL, inside bar, inverted hammer on decreased volume. Not as close to the 5ema as I would like, but close enough considering the upper tail
• Exited during 12:50 bar... didn't like how volume dried up with nr bars... felt like a reversal and I didn't want to give up dough

Prophet price increases

Just received a friendly customer service call from Prophet letting me know that their rates will be increasing and if I wanted to 'lock in' to a lower rate than what I'm paying now for 1 or 2 years. I asked what the rate increase would be and he said from $29.95 (my silver membership) to $45 a month.
 
I've actually been thinking of canceling my membership because of a) all the reliability issues with Prophet lately and b) I think I can get my candidates from Briefing.com's gap list (provided by Jamie) and my IB scans.
 
However, I currently use Prophet as my intraday data feed along with my data provider for backfilling. After hanging up the phone, I went over to IQFeed to check in on their data rates. I may be calculating incorrectly, but I think they want to charge $32 a month just for data. Is this correct? I remember signing on with them for a trial run in February and it was only like $10 a month plus $3 for the exchange fees.
 
In any case... if anyone has a good option for a data feed. Please pass along.

Frustrating day

Went long XING (break of 10:10 bar, 10-min chart) and it stalled at the ORH. Then, I went short DSL on a nice NR bar with low volume on the 10-min chart again (12:10 bar low) and I was shaken out a few bars later for a very small loss.
Now, XING... eh, I can understand how it didn't have the engine to get past the ORH on such a down day. But DSL... WTF???? It drops right after my entry and I'm all ready to pop open a Tsing Tao and then it gets all choppy. DSL proceeded to drop to the daily pivot low of 52.81... and I had a sell limit order already in place at 53.10 (you know, I didn't want to be greedy or anything).
This week has made me want to become a scalper. I have left so much on the table after large initial moves after my entry.