Markets are horrible for long positions. I woke up 15 minutes before the opening bell and the ISM data somehow got leaked and the Dow fell hard along with the other indexes. I saw one stock I liked last night and it performed badly to no surprise.
Not much else going on for me. I'll see what the market brings after hours today.
Had a few stocks I was watching this morning looking to see if I could get a morning pop out of any of them. None of them performed and they all were in free fall mode along with the market as a whole.
Q's SPY and IWM are all falling still as I'm writing this. Looks like I'll be sitting out. I'm not too surprised because the TRIN closed Friday at 0.72 I believe. I need a number more around 2 or 3. I was looking forward to APWR but it fell right away. So, I'll have to sit this one out and see what the market brings me after hours today to pick through.
Quote of the Day:
Behavior is a mirror in which every one displays his own image.
--Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Quote of the Day:
Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.
--Albert Szent–Gyorgyi de Nagyraolt
None of my watch list stocks did anything I thought would be great for a trade. CHCI shot up huge on the first candle, I think 20% or so and then died. Couldn't maintain those levels and seems to be stuck at 1.20 and now falling.
TARR touched 1.53 and fell like a rock. I quickly got rid of that one and moved to EXPO. Which was the only one making higher lows, but it out of all those candles moving, it only had a 2% rise. Potential gain was not even close to how much I was going to put on the line. I bailed on this one also.
Unfortunately, nothing worked out for me on these trades. However, I've been profitable every week so far of Jan. and up very nicely for the month. I need to maintain this discipline next week and for the month of February. One week at a time.
Patience. Don't lose money. We're here to make it, not lose it.
Quote of the Day:
He who does not prefer exile to slavery is not free by any measure of freedom, truth and duty.
--Kahlil Gibran
I'll be sitting on the sidelines today. I had 3 stocks in my watch list. Two of them were down and the other one didn't even budge. All the profit taking in the last 30 minutes or so of yesterdays close I'm sure had a lot to do with the rough start.
Every time the fed cuts rates, people feel the need to take profits immediately like they'll never seem them again. Until we can get a cut, shoot up, and stay up, I don't see this situation stabilizing or showing any kind of strength. But then again, I could be wrong, and probably am.
I'll be thinking all day on trading and if I can get any "ah ha!" moments, I'll come here and write them down to share.
Don't lose money.
Not putting on any trades this morning. I was watching two stocks. One of them fell immediately and the other was jumping up and down in a wide range and then broke down and fell. The Q's have been on a steady down trend so far this morning. Overall conditions aren't great for me so staying off to the side while the public destroys themselves is more than fine with me, haha.
We'll see what kind of action goes on through the day. I'd like to see some good stocks to trade for Monday after hours today but whatever the market brings I'm happy with.
Markets look to be rallying pretty nicely off the lows this morning. Although two of the stocks I was looking at didn't want to move with the crowd. No trading from me today.
I'll be watching to see how things play out, especially towards the end of the day to see if anyone will be selling into the close or buying up shares.
Put me in coach! This is how I feel. I'd like to put on a trade but the conditions aren't right yet. I was watching MATR, CRIS, and RSC. Two out of three were up pre market but once the gates opened they all started to fall along with the market.
So, I'll be waiting for this day to pass so I can see what I can do about tomorrow. I'm starting to like the days I don't trade, you know? I don't have to trade everyday. I've only been making a few trades a week and I've been pulling in more cash than I usually do in a month. Me sitting on the sidelines during the down times I think is what's helping me stay profitable. But it's still early in the game to get cocky.
There's an African poem I like to read, I'm sure you've heard it.
"Every morning in Africa, when a lion wakes up, it knows it has to run faster than the slowest gazelle. When a gazelle wakes up, it knows that it has to run faster than the fastest lion.
It doesn't matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle, but when the sun comes up, you better start running." - Herb Caen
Didn't make any trades but I did have a couple stocks on "the hot seat" which is a watch list I keep of potential buys and I had REXX in it. I didn't trade it though because I wasn't sure how it would react to its chart and it looks to be up about 5% so far.
I also had COIN in my watch list but got rid of it last night because I didn't like how it was in a down trend before it bounced and I'm glad I didn't keep it, down about 9%. I'd say major profit taking.
So, I'll be sitting on the sideline, watching the action and hoping no one is losing money in this down trend.
I've been sitting out these last few days because I need to let my funds settle so I can start moving some out. I just so happen decided to pick these days off while the market shoots about 500 points. Oh well though. I probably could of made a pretty penny these last couple days but you can't trade everything all the time.
Hopefully, I'll be back in business on Monday or Tuesday. Until then, I'm just watching the action.
Market is crumbling right now. Every chart I pulled up looked like a nice setup but then it fell apart and deflated right in front of me as the Q's were tanking fast. I thought I might be able to find a solid strong stock but doesn't look like I will. I missed my chance to go short so I won't be chasing the ride.
I might just sit on my hands today and watch the action from the sidelines, which is ok because I need to let my funds settle in my account so I can move some out.
We'll see what happens.
It's about 7:10am PST and the NYSE is about equal in advances and declines but we've made 113 new lows already and only 21 highs. Not a good start to finish out the week.
Not much happened today. Market rallied and then went stale for most part of the day and then rallied a little before the close. I had about 8 setups I liked for the day but none of them hit my lows since we were so neutral. I didn't force any trades today which I'm happy about. One step closer to overcoming my impatience problem which in the end should save me some money from making stupid trades.
When I start feeling excited and want to make trades I think about the stocks I looked over the night before and all the work I put into the setups I picked out and I feel more relaxed and confident. I feel better knowing that I have setups I've picked out myself and I have confidence in my abilities so I wait for them to happen. If they don't happen then all the better. I'll end the day with a Goose Egg but it's better then red numbers. So, that's something I'm working on.
I notice that I make better decisions when I lean back in my chair with my arms crossed rather than leaning forward toward the screen with my hand on the mouse. The TWM trade for example is a perfect trade in my opinion and I did it completely objective and I feel I can be that way when I'm patient and relaxed about the market. When I see stocks shooting up huge amounts I'll get excited and try and get in on them but I know that I already have setups waiting for me and when the alerts go off I've got my own set of opportunities to look for.
My last post about CKP I won't be trading. It's only trading around 130,000 shares I think. Way below my guide lines. I still watch it to see if it plays out but I won't be trading it either way.
I'm going to do my best to stay patient and wait for my opportunities, not the ones that other people are waiting for all around me who've found them based on their systems.
Basically, I don't want to be over trading anymore. It's starting to kill me.
I only setup about 10 or so trades with price alerts but only a couple hit but not much action happened after that. The Q's hit my high of 50.25 but quickly fell and now it looks like that'll be the new high of the day (it's 11:30am PST)
I'm organizing together a master trade book of all my trades, wins/losses, good trades bad trades, notes, psychology notes, market analysis stuff like that. This will help me in developing a personal trading history with what works for me and what doesn't, personal patterns, etc. I spent some time last night creating a cover sheet for my book. I'm getting it laminated today to put on my binder/book. I've been keeping a log for some time now, I'm just taking it to the next step.
I'll update this post with a screen cap of the Q's later at the close. It's pretty much the only chart I've been following today since nothing else is going on.
I can easily spend all do doing this to all kinds of charts but it's a little time consuming and I have some notes to consolidate. This is a quick shot of the Q's today. The cut off is at 12:30 PST, so everything after that isn't accounted for. I hope you can see what I tried to outline, I can make it full res but I'm sure it blow out your margins since I'm using a 22in wide screen (the reason why my pics might look so big). In case you do what the full picture it's uploaded here.
Now, on to deciphering this mumbo jumbo. The Green boxes represent consolidation which will either determine a significant price move higher or lower. The Blue circles represent key psychological points where, as you can, they tend to be on the same level across the board. As the top circles started getting lower over time the stock eventually started going lower as people weren't feeling the value of the Q's were worth those previous levels. The Red line represents a key pivot point throughout the day. As you can see, the stock is either above it using it as support or below it using it as resistance, they're key points here. The Purple line at the bottom represents the low of the day and how it bounces up and consolidates then goes back up again to just below the mid day levels. Yellow Arrows represent key points in the stock breaking key psychological levels. Big moves happened when these were broke.
This gives you a good glimpse of what I keep an eye out when I'm watching charts in real time. I'm constantly drawing out new levels and key points and I wait for the stock to either confirm that particular levels strength or to confirm it's weakness.
I only did this because I've always wanted to spend some time visualizing what I was thinking about in the past so I can get a full perspective of my thoughts on the day, and because it was a slow day :-) But since this takes a while, I'll probably only be doing this on trades I actually make.
Doesn't look like I missed out on anything today. Dow was up but stayed neutral at those levels. Didn't see any big movers pre market that made new highs. None of my watch list stocks hit any of their targets. I'll probably take tomorrow off as well. See what happens over the weekend and maybe pick up on Monday.
On a side note, I got a parking ticket for 38 bucks. Parking in southern Cali is such a pain! :(
I won't be trading today or tomorrow. Technically, I don't have it what it takes to be a full fledged day trader and I don't want to be tagged as one. I already have 6 trades in a row and I'm really pushing my luck.
QQQQ's are having a hard time breaking 49.27 if it does that I think it'll have some potential to break out to the upside. Until then, it'll probably stay nuetral today like it's been doing all this week.
On another note, AAPL will be announcing that they'll be carrying the iPhone in Europe. Which I'm sure will make a lot of people happy and boost sales even more now that it's a couple hundred bucks cheaper.
Looks like AAPL is trying to get this thing on it's way to world wide domination.
Spanish telecommunications company Telefonica SA (TEF) acknowledged is in talks with U.S.' Apple Inc. over the right to sell the U.S. company's new phone, iPhone, in Spain, Spanish news agency Efe reported Wednesday.
AAPL is trading up 88 cents at 137.71. A 0.61% gain for the day (8:40am pacific)
