Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Best and worst trades from Tuesday, December 28th

Seems on these slow days the traders migrate to the hot stocks and hot sectors, and the last few days have seen familiar names in mining see positive price action. I had some alerts go off on miners from a couple weeks back, and got into two good trades in UXG and SA. Gap play in SNTS was the poor play of the day.

Monday, December 27, 2010

C for longs

2 Charts. Click on the first one for the near term daily price action, and the second one for the fantasy outcome in the long term monthly charts.

slow times

Nice melt up today. I only watched the open, then was out most the day. Took two trades, a flesh wound -.03 in APWR, and took MHR at yesterdays high with a buy stop, and took half off on sell limit at 6.99 while i was away, but the darn thing rocked up to 7.50, wish I had been around to take off more, so am sitting on the second half with a hard stop at breakeven. If the pre-market looks healthy I will take it off before the open so I dont get wick'd out on any first minute bar shenanigans. Still hold some of that ATPG, which just rested today. Might add to it over the near resistance if I am around to baby it. Tempted to sell last of SLV on weakness, it has a decision to make...

Thursday, December 23, 2010

GE for longs

The annotated chart below is a daily chart, and the reason I am sticking to that is, with GE, you really need to take one step at a time. GE has lots of technical hurdles ahead of it on the long term charts, with lots of supply from 22 to over 40 dollars. After such a smashing, it would be nice to see GE put in V bottom, but that opportunity has passed, and the daily holds the key as to whether GE can start to put in a steady climb, or if it is destined to the purgatory of years of basing action. I cannot even fathom taking a fundamental investing approach with this company/country. Its a dragon obscured by steam and smoke, thought by some to be dying from debt, but it may not be dead, only sleeping. Price is the only truth in the market.

So, the short message for GE is it needs to get quickly to and through 22 and start to work on the 22 to 40 area. The daily below will show what it needs to do to get there. Click on it to read...

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Best and worst trade from Tuesday December 21st

The ATPG trade is a funny one for me, as the twitter-sphere and the chat room I am in during the day really buzzes about this stock, so I have been following it a bit. My entry was more discretionary than mechanical, and even though I do play that kind of setup from the minute chart a lot, I loaded the trade with a market order and banged away, all oddly detached, and it worked out great. I am not sure it has the potential everyone thinks it has, but what do I know. What I think is that it needs to really leg up tomorrow, and then I will be a believer. Just a funny trade for me as others I took I was passionate about, and they amounted to less than this, or, as JBL, to bother.

2 annotated charts on ATPG, the daily and minute.


Thursday, December 16, 2010

JNJ for longs

Click on the chart to take the medicine.

More meh, best and worst trade of day.

Not losing money, but this flat spell is getting tedious. Missing the V short was not good, I should have been following after the spike up, but I turned away. Only took two trades, so here they are.


Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Meh days of December

Best and worst trades of the day. I only took 3 trades anyway... and there is opportunity on these days (MNKD, VRSN for example), I just was not shopping in the right aisle. The MYL had great potential with a break of 21 but the market pulled the rug out. More notes in the screenshots...


Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Fed day, tues the 14th of dec

I have had good luck trading pre-fed as the market is kind of stable before the announcement, so if you can isolate a few flyers in the morning you can have clear sailing until they put the hammer down. Unfortunately I did not get anything great today mostly because I did not correctly scale out my sells in AMGN and PAY.


 I did not handle this one correctly.
 No setup, trying to be cute, did not get me anywhere, though I really felt it was going to pop...

Monday, December 13, 2010

Best long plays of 2010

Holding stock long is not my strong suit, so I will indulge myself in reviewing my 2 best long positions of 2010.
 This stock yields ~10%

best and worst friday dec 10

MFC was chosen as XLF had been strong,  it had spent lots of time in the box between 14 and 15.50, and it had broken out and taken the 200 MA. I felt it was time for it to get some leg, and I caught it just right.


FUQI... yech. notes in the screen shot.
 

Friday, December 10, 2010

best and worst of thursday


I had a flat trade, so technically that was the worst, but ONP was poor execution and it cost me money. The HEAT trade worked out, and I sold the remaining swing portion today at 5.38

Thursday, December 9, 2010

CREE for longs

Someone asked my technical read on CREE, and while it seems a bit much, 50% revenue growth and a low bar set on earnings may fuel the technical potential of this stock. I have a read on both the monthly and the weekly charts, but its the monthly that gives this stock something to live for ;)

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

best and worst trades, wednesday

thanks to iamtradernoob77 in the chatroom for shouting out this setup on the daily, which i ended up taking.

tues

my best and worst of tues, which was a fair day
egi had no follow through the next day, it was strong on tues, but metals were deeply pulling back, and i thought it not wise to hold the stock unless it gave me a big cushion. it did not so i sold, smart decision, but not a good trade. i did feel the exposure was not bad though. miners have been popping even on weak gdx days.

Saturday, December 4, 2010

good fri

waddaya know, market has a consolidation day and i have a good day... HL, DRYS were the good ones.




Thursday, December 2, 2010

poor days

so the market has had two screaming up days... and while the bulls were partying i was getting mauled by the bears on the first day, and making pocket change on the second. wtf. this is not the first time i have had this experience, so there is something about my trading style that does not work on these gap up and high trend days. my thoughts:

i need to take smaller positions and give my picks much more room to work. something about these days make the stocks range wider but still trend up. my tight stop style does not work

on these days i think it fair to take a few more positions, since the stops are wider i dont have to follow the ticks of each one as closely.

need to buy dips of the gap players on these days?

maybe stocks are so loopy on these days because seller are taking advantage of the strength and dropping larger blocks. conjecture.

[well, i have reviewed the below charts and i am not so sure. pretty flat action for gappers. maybe strong market strength takes away from the gappers and give strength to conventional daily setup plays....]





Early winner/loser in 5g, Ericsson ERIC, Nokia NOK

I like to start collecting stock tickers for after the new year, stocks that have been beaten down and window dressed more than they deserve...