One trade today at EOD...

One late-day trade and it went basically how a number of my recent trades have gone. I got stopped out one penny from the bottom of a move just as price reversed in the direction I intended. Just missed again! It is frustrating but the good part is that it is a pattern of behavior and patterns indicate consistency with a need for some refinement. I can live with that.

The chart of CRM shows that I went long at the spot of the green line and set a stop at the redline. Price pushed down very suddenly for just a flash to prompt the over-reactive suckers to go short, get the generally fearful weaker hands to run away, and like me- trip the over-cautious stops of traders getting long, before reversing for the late day surge I expected (3:50pm candle). The jolting nature of this move down meant that my exit price for the stopout was below my stop line because of reaction time. Looking at the candle after it finished, you'd never note what actually happened... it looks like just another red candle. The quickness of the down move just re-emphasizes the idea that these are moves of intention to trip stops of some traders and get impulsive other traders faked into thinking the stock is surging down and short it (the "head fake"). I have to learn to expect this and enter after the shake out move. As I mentioned before, I had a correct interpretation of the direction and the momo shift, but got punked on the nifty, nasty, sharp down move... AGAIN! :-)

For the record, I had a twenty cent gain in the 3:40 candle in which I entered, but held onto the trade in keeping with my prime directive to hold all stocks until stopout or the last 15 minutes of the day. In this case, I still had a slight profit within the last 15 minutes, given that it was the next candle, but I still decided to hold because I felt there was a substantial up-move coming. In hindsight, holding for the big EOD surge was the right thing to do, though it resulted in a loss when it was said and done.

And this is just one more example of why I do not trade in my live account while learning to master this art.