4 trades

All losses. Felt like I was on a treadmill today and going nowhere. Fortunately, only SHLD was a full 1R loss... the rest were fairly minimal. Traded the following:

SHLD: Short, 1:30pm bar low
GPRO: Long, 12pm bar high
DLTR: Long, 11:30am bar high
ALD: Short: 12pm bar low

Sometimes, proper trade management will cause me to take a loss. For instance, DLTR and ALD never touched my original stop (opposite side of entry) but I partialed out to limit losses.
Have a good weekend, I'm off to Nurnberg, Germany tomorrow! Kicking the Christmas spirit into high gear for the kids as we're going to a bonafide Christmas market.

Tough

Hard to make a high-probability buck lately. Market's up big, I've got a full watchlist and - up to this point - no candidates are setting up. Sucks since this is my 'full' trading day and I'm out of town on Friday.

APC - Short

Still waiting for a day this week when I'm burning up the keyboard with orders. Thought today was boring as well. I caught APC short but initially I didn't like the lack of unusual volume. I decided not to discard it since volume was on the fringe (between too low and just right). My entry bar was a failed reversal at the ORL with volume. Exited on a break of the 2:45pm bar high (I would normally partial here, but since I shorted a stock on a big 'up' day I didn't want to risk too much profit). Turned out to be the right move as the stock moved up big after I exited.

Nothin' happening

Sticking to my guns and waiting for the trades I want. Didn't happen today. I was stalking ISIL at 11am but decided against. Too bad.

No trades

There were trades to be made out there... but they just didn't meet the specifics that I look for. GA and FNM are two decent examples. I'm expecting very low volume after today so I don't expect to trade till next Monday. If I don't post... enjoy your Thanksgiving. We're actually celebrating it here on Saturday with some American friends.

LVS - Short

For all the IB users out there... were you experiencing any issues with IB's data in the first hour of trading? My backfill was acting funky and I had to clear my charts and backfill again. Pain in the ass considering how long IB's backfill takes. Anyway, I traded LVS and missed the first 'ideal' entry off a break of the 12pm bar low. However, I was able to get in on a break of the 12:30pm bar low which closed below S2 on increased volume. Exited the entire position on a break of the 2pm bar high.

Tradeweek

With my new schedule I really needed to find a trading style that was simple, effective for gappers and could be applied throughout the day. What I ended up focusing on were two and three bar retracements. I find these to be not only easy to spot but also highly effective. Also, I'm also going to concentrate on just the :15 timeframe for a more 'relaxed' (dare I say) trading experience. The retracement trade is pretty simple. I look for 2 or 3 bar retracements (either up or down) with a reversal bar and I enter on a confirmation of the reversal. I also look for potential 'dummy' retracement plays where the reversal bar sets up against the retracement trend but there is no confirmation. I remember Trader-X saying a while back that this is a pattern you should look for if you wanted to reduce candidates or wanted more high probability trades. So, here's a look at some charts this week that fit the above criteria:

Executing all these trades, including partials, would've produced the following stats:
Total trades: 9
Win: 7
Loss: 2
Win rate: 78%
Total R: 14.46