Ho Hum

Not a lot going on. Tried shorting WHR only to be stopped out completely. I think I bought very near the low of the day (break of 10:15 bar low, :05). I then went long FCX - you read that correctly - and made back all my losses plus some change.  Normally, I would be happy but when I looked at my chart I realized I drew my fib. lines from the PDL to very near the :30 bar high instead of the :15. So, when I entered on a break of the 10:35 bar high my price target was the fib. ext. at 31.28. I was able to get out completely at 31.25. 

A bit of luck never hurts. Although X recently blogged about using the :30 OR. I'm happy today is over but would really like to get back to solid trading days filled with opportunities.

Friday's trades

Nothing worked today as there was absolutely no follow through. Traded JPM, POT, MT and NUE. Had a minor loss between JPM and POT combined and was BE with MT and NUE. All the trades moved at least 1R - which is a good sign - but completely stalled.

This was still a good week for me and was just short of reaching my pre-determined goal. Looking forward to having the same success next week.

Have a great weekend.

Tricky day

In the end profitable but a lot left on the table. Took 4 trades all-in-all and V proved to be the breadwinner today. Now, when I entered V, the candle I entered on had closed positive and much closer to the high than what is shown on the chart. There were some weird spikes going on late in the day and I cleared the chart and then backfilled it again. After backfilling, I noticed my entry bar was negative and, if it's indeed correct, I would not have entered there. Even so, my entry bar was not the strongest and as I was waiting for the setup, I noticed the wild swings in price. So, I set my high/low entry spread to be the low of the 12:05 bar and the high of the entry bar. This helped tremendously as I would've been stopped out of the trade had I used the low of the entry bar.

I know this is long-winded but the bottomline is that sometimes making slight changes can help put the odds more in your favor. Luck also helps.

FU trade: AKAM

Brickwall trades: BBT, DLB

Hangin' out trade: V

Digg it

Dinosaur Trader is on a mission. Get as high on Digg as he possibly can with another great post. Read it then Digg it. 

Heck, even Trader X is promoting it.

I'm out

This was one boring day. Although I did get in a couple of decent setups that went to 1R and then I decided to bail for one reason or another. With SNH, I liked the setup (FU, :15, 7th bar low) but didn't like that it was inside yesterday's range. Once there was resistance at yesterday's low... I set my stop to BE.

With DIS, decent setup (hangin' out, :05, 12:50 bar) but my entry bar was a bit wide. Price moved down but then I just didn't like the action around the $19 level and set my stop to BE. 

I'll try to post charts when the market ends.

Tuesday's trades

As far as I can tell, I'm not writing this post during a dream. I actually did have another profitable day. Let's get right to it. Went long TYC off a break of 10:25 bar high. This was kinda like a long version of yesterday's MMM short trade. A brickwall setup as the entry bar found the ORH as strong support. Exited half of my position at BE after price rose close to 1R and fell back down. Kept the rest and decided to exit on a break of the 11:20 bar low as $24 was showing strong resistance. A decent gainer.

My bread winner today was PRGO. Entered short off a break of the 10:40 bar low (hangin' out setup). Well, I actually was a little late to this and had to alter my share size to get in as price moved down. I was pretty convinced of this setup that as price rose back up on the following bar, I decided to buy more shares at what would have been my original entry price. Man, that makes no sense... just look at the chart. I exited my final shares just above the fib. ext.

MMM....

Nothing tasty about the post title, but my trade in MMM today did produce a nice result. My entry candle was a short of the 10:20 bar low. But price kinda skipped down and I hadn't placed my order yet. I liked the entry so I reduced my share size and got in about .10 below what I wanted. That kinda changes things as my BE point is now different. So... I screwed up again and went to scale out a few shares at 1R but ended up buying more shares. Unlike other trades, everything worked in my favor and I ended my position at around 51.79 after a pretty considerable move up from 51.25. Had I kept my order in place, price would have proceeded to rise up to my BE point and stop me out. Even though price moved back down and hit the fib. ext. (and beyond) I still feel good with the trade.