2 nd trade

I didn't get any of the down move, but I have 42 cents of gain as I write this. Normally this is a great place to scalp a quick 40 cent gain but I am forced by my pledge to stay in and simply PRETEND to take a gain; then stop out later if necessary.

As I type this, price has dipped back down below my entry but is rising again. Had I scalped that gain, here would be a great place to go long again and wait to see if there is a slower reversion back up to the mean.

1 st trade of the day

First trade of the day was a stop out, in keeping with my pact to only exit on stop outs or anytime within the last 15 mins of the trading day. But, I REALLY wanted to exit on the downspike of the 11:35 red candle with the long lower wick. I mean, I REALLY wanted to exit with the 32 cent gain I had. My sense was that the long lower wicks on the candles in the downtrend I was playing indicated demand was strong and buyers were eating up shares from the 11:10 candle through the candle I in which I had the urge to exit. Long tails mean volatility. In volatile markets, one should take quicker profits when offered, in my opinion. Further, TNA is range bound so far... as I write this, 10 mins past my exit point, we are still in the trading range though price is pushing down toward the LOD where I had my urge to exit earlier. My gut feel is that lower is the likely scenario for the day. Frankly, if that happens, going short where I stopped out would have been the smart play, which also represents a pullback to the 17 EMA and also corresponds to the near-doji candle at 11:10 am.

OK, here we go lower... as I suspected. What this also means is that the move lower began only 8 cents higher than where I stopped out. I am not disheartened by this. I simply have to be sharper on tactics to reflect the correct strategic reading of momo.

One last thing about this early trade today is that I entered in the direction of the prevailing trend, which is against my natural impulse to play for reversals. I had to give it a moment of thought before doing it, and that pause says to me that this necessary mode of trading needs more practice. To my credit, I consciously waited for a pullback to enter, in this case, I waited until after the downspike had retreated leaving a long red wick; a satisfactory pullback point in which to enter short. One thing about price spikes (up or down) on volume is that they are high probablility indicators of reversal. The reversal did come causing me to stop out, but I also had a chance to take profits of over 30 cents before the reversal. And in volatile conditions, it makes sense to take quicker profits.

UPDATE: Since writing, correcting the typos, and posting this summary of my first trade, price did hit a new LOD as I mentioned above but then reversed after touching the S2 pivot and went up in 20 mins to touch the Pivot and is now pulling down away from the Pivot. For the time being, we are remaining range bound. Just like the old days before computers when floor traders used to use pivot points to guide them, they still are places of S & R.

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.