RSS Feed
I will not have a computer this weekend and will not be posting agin until wednesday. Hence I’m not sure if I’ll be able to post my Swing Trades on TradersCue this week or not. I’ll do my best to find a computer and some time to squeeze in the analysis and will certainly let you know if I do.
Archive for June, 2006
Posted in 
6-30-2006 Trading Results
June 30th, 2006 
Jason 
Daily Score: -.02
Batting Average: 64.71%
Full Stop %: 11.80%
EpT: 0.94
I’m calling it quits early today to get a jump on the holiday weekend. I had a very interesting morning though.
Given that my Daily Score was negative, I was very fortunate to have the profitable day that I did for it could very easily have turned out differently. The reason why my batting average is a little lower today is because out of the 17 trades I made today, 14 of them were Trend plays which historically have a lower win rate but higher Reward/Risk ratio.
I very nearly got burned by what I call the Fade-Death-Spiral. It happens when I am fading a stock that is going against me and I average down anticipating the turn any minute now. Anyone who’s every tried fading has been caught in it at one time or another and it can be quite painful.
My plan does allow for me to fade moves given that I have exceptional reasons for making them. Usually I make fades either after a security is already extended and then has an explosive Wide Range Bar(WRB) into an area of support/resistance on climactic volume. That’s not what I had today.
Today I had the other kind of fade, which is the fizzle kind. This morning brought a sizable decline on big volume. After which the markets started to correct. This correction coincided with markedly decreased volume so I faded at what in hindsight was not a valid area of resistance. Prices went up again wit even lower volume; then I made my biggest mistake of the day and faded for no reason. In hindsight the only reason why I think I pulled the trigger was to average down my position, but price was in between 2 pivots and there was no sign of reversal to warrant my 2nd fade entry.
Prices increased some more. Now down a good amount I came to my senses, sat on my hands and waited until prices made it to the next valid resitance range. Prices stalled, and I entered Fade #3 (which should have been fade # 1 if I was trading according to my plan). Prices muddled a little higher, hit the high range of the resistance area and then sported a divergence so I fired my last bullet and placed my stop a few ticks above the entire area.
Finally the correction began and I was able to come away with a 2 tick gain on the whole lot. But if I had stuck to my plan and only taken the last 2 legitimate fades I would have turned an already good day into a spectacular day!
The moral of the story; Stick to your plan, and be very very careful when fading a market for it can erase a week’s pay if you jump the gun.
6-29-2006 Trading Results
June 29th, 2006 Jason 
Daily Score: +.259
Batting Average: 88.89%
Full Stop %: 11.11%
EpT: 0.78
Having missed this morning’s move due to Comcast’s untimely repair schedule, I was pleased with my trades this afternoon going 8/9. I made a couple of bad trades but got lucky on one of them after it came within 1 tick of my stop before reversing. That made the difference between me having an even day and me having a pretty solid day.
The good news is that it was my 12th straight session where my Trend trades were positive. Unfortunately, my 1 loss today was a scalp play which makes it my 7th straight session where my scalping plays were unprofitable. Overall, my trend plays have been more than able to compensate for these losses, but until I can turn that trend around, I cannot yet consider myself a complete trader.
I know that I can do it I just have to completely reign in my impulsiveness and start putting together some more 20 consecutive win streaks like I was able to at the beginning of this month. In scalping there is NO margin for error and I am being too impatient on a lot of my recent plays.
On another note, for those of you subscribing to my TradersCue stock picks, I closed out STR today for it is up 6.5% in 4 days so I’m not going to be greedy going for that last $1 that was originally targeted. I also cancelled the NI play for if it can’t break out today when the Dow was up 200 points, then that is a big sign of some relative weakness. It still may break, but I’m sure there are better plays out there for next week.
Damnit Comcast!
June 29th, 2006 Jason Bad news is that my cable connection went down this morning and when I called, they said that my area was experiencing an outage and I could expect it to be back up in a few hours.
“No Biggie” i thought expecting this morning to be pretty dull anyway until the fed announcement. So I go and run some errands and get back a few minutes ago to see what an incredible run I’ve missed :-(
Ah well, just thought I’d vent a little. That’s what blogs are for anyway right?
6-28-2006 Futures Play of the Day
June 28th, 2006 Jason 
Click to Enlarge
I wanted to use today’s P.O.D. to highlight a simple but very effective scalp play that I look for in the Index Futures markets.
All that is needed really is a 2minute Chart with volume (which is the chart on the right). But having the 55-tick chart on the left really helps you time the play much better.
This is a 2-tick scalp only. Oftentimes it can be a good setup for a little more depending on other technical factors, but it has a very high probability of success when going for 2-ticks.
Here’s the Setup:
1.) After an initial move in one direction or another price then consolidates sideways or down
2.) This consolidation must last at least 4 bars
3.) The volume on all of these bars must be lower than the 50-period moving average
4.) A volume spike in the oposite direction must occur that is
A.) Greater than the 50-period moving average and
B.) At least 1.5 times greater than the previous volume-bar
5.) You can then enter the trade as a micro-fade on the next pullback to the rising 55-tick trendline using a 7-tick stop & 2-tick target
The play I entered today occured at the second arrow on the 2-minute chart… I entered at the bottome of the green hammer that is circled right before the red candle at 691.70 & within 3 seconds had gotten my 2-ticks.
The first arrow on the 2-minute chart show another situation where you could have probably gotten 2-ticks. It only has 3 bars under the 50-period moving average but the volume was very explosive on that bar being 3x greater than the prior bar. While I would recommend sticking to the 4-bar setups until you get the hang of it, with experience comes the ability to deviate slightly from the plan when other mitigating factors are present.
