COINW- What a Roller Coaster!

Man, after that trade, I had to go for a run. I just got back running a bunch of stairs over looking a huge cliff here in Newport. I run there a lot to reflect on my goals and what I'm doing.

 

Well, I got entered COINW at 6.62 It immediately started declining and at one point I was down about 15% I think. When that happened I basically said "screw it" and didn't really care anymore what happened. Then the QQQQ's started declining pretty rapidly and I that just reinforced me not caring.

 

Right after the price started stalling and not moving anymore, it slowly inched it's way higher and all of a sudden I see an order for 15k shares come in and that started driving the price straight up. Of course, the moment I see a profit I take it and I sold at 6.77

 

My exit strategy for taking profit is simple but I have a hard time following it. When the bottom of the most recent candle gaps up above the 7 EMA, take profits.

 

In retrospect I got out way too early. It ended up shooting to around 7.50 but I'm happy I didn't end the day down huge, lol.

 

Over Excited

Wow, can't believe how much the markets are up. The only significant piece of news today was the unemployment rate which stayed the same at 4.7%  It's funny how the general public of traders over react to good news and always over reacts on bad news.

 

These reports that came out today aren't the "holy grail" were looking for to determine if we're going into a recession or not or if the feds need to cut rates again. There is no "holy grail" that will let us know everything is ok. Only time will let us know what's going on and the more time we have the more it'll help build confidence or fear into people. So far it looks to be building confidence, doesn't mean we'll stay confident in the future though.

 

I'd like there to be some kind of sell off at the end of the day. That'll tell me that people recognize this upswing as too much and start taking profits. If not, then this could lead into next week and then maybe have some kind of sell off next weak. Either way it'll happen it's just a matter of when.

 

Overall we're looking good. Dow, SP, Nasdaq are all up big, volatility is down almost 2 points. How long will this last?

Over Trading

I think what I'm doing is over trading. I'm finding opportunities that look good but don't perform. Or still, my time frame for holding a stock is way too short. I need to get over, over trading. Maybe I should try holding my stocks for a few days longer and see if my analysis of the stock will play out if it has time to grow, instead of forcing gains.

 

I also need to develop more strict guidelines for picking stocks. These are my current guide lines; stocks that have made new triple tops, stocks that are very close to support levels, stocks at least 250,000 shares. I need to fine tune this more to where I get to the point that I have a higher probability of the trade performing better than worse. Although I'm not worried about having a trade go sour, I'm worried about my probability of winning trades, which has gone down significantly over the last month or so. On the other hand, I have changed my trading plan since then.

 

Before, I was trading stocks purely based on trending channels of support/resistance. Buy low, sell high in this upward channel. In June and July this was fairly easy since we were in a great trending market. Things have changed and I haven't been able to spot any trades that looked like the ones I traded back in the early summer. That's probably when I started over trading. I felt I had to be in the market constantly to be make money. Which isn't the case as I have, ummm...7 losing trades now in a row.

 

This is all part of the learning process I guess. I'll need to keep fine tuning my system and myself as a trader if I want to be truly great.