Thursday trading

TOS/Ameritrade broke a trade for me today. I had a GTC buy stop set for ICLR to trigger at ~22.25 (can't remember exact right now), but right at the open the trade triggered and filled at 22.12, but on a couple different platforms the price never exceeded 21.90 for a while after the open. I am fine getting triggered and having the stock back off, but not even showing a price close to my fill is not right. Anyway, TOS thought it did not pass the smell test either and broke the trade. If its fishy, call. And it always good to be reminded that on a thin stock like ICLR that the opening nano-second can see wild bid/ask swings before it all fills in, and stops can get triggered either way. That is why I don't always like to have hard stops set for the open or close.

I traded CKSW (played the opening break at 8.84, decent, but round tripped 1/3 of it... had high hopes), JOE (got at 22.51, sold all by eod, thx Jay!), DVR (lost a couple pennies), LINE (did fine on first 1/3, made a couple pennies on rest, meh), BZH (made a penny). Day of singles and walks, not bad, pays the bills. The SHZ and MVIS swings were sold yesterday, nothing thrilling.

BAC for longs

Click on the pic to enlarge...

Best and worst trade Tuesday January 4th.

I think I will also start adding all the tickers I traded, along with the mark-ups of the best and and worst. So today, in addition to the two below, I also bought MVIS at 2.10 which I am holding overnight. So only 3 buys today. Also wanted ICLR, but it did not trigger. It put in some higher vol today, including a 100k block after the close. ICLR is not one to buy aggressively in anticipation as it is a real churner, and thin. My planned position is pretty small. I would not be shocked to see it gap past me, so I may never get it.

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.

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...

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...