SPY chop

The market is just chopping around in a range, a real mess. Seems a market only for scalpers or long term holds with wide tolerance. Best to wait for some direction. If you are holding any longs (or shorts) for an extended period, plot them with the SPY and make sure they have their own independent momentum, and are not just chopping around with everything else.

Here is a possible scenario...

trading edge in FB

Here is an overlay of the SPY and FB that I took on Friday. Is there an edge here? Might consider waiting for a divergence to give some indication.

keep on keeping on

Still here, still trading, always adapting. Been very light trading in the morning, with 1/4 size and a "right or right out" mentality. I have been making more successful trades in the afternoon after things shape up and the direction of the day becomes clear, so have shifted accordingly. It seems the market is all about headfakes in the morming. I remember a time when most my trades were morning gappers, and what you saw was what you got, but that is not working so much for me now, so mostly sticking with unusual high volume stocks and playing breaking news. I was 2 seconds away from getting DRIV, and missed LEAP and PCS entirely. I took PFE but got wick'd and didn't get back in, but I did get AVP. I was late and missed the initial move, but took the second break and it worked instantly. One good trade makes up for a stretch of tight misses.

Initial spike trade - OCZ

OCZ came up on my scanner last week with a big volume and modest price spike. Part of the trade was a simple break of the high of the spike, but I also got into some at the low of the initial pullback, based on some reckoning on where it might dip to and how much I was willing to risk. I should state, which I did not in the chart notes, is that my calculated stop was just below the base created before the spike, around a 6.66 stop, about .10 risk, figuring a successful hod break would take it to test 7.

JPM trade

Pressed for time so just marked up the chart and blurted out some stuff. I did not call this one out live. I trade with people who are much much better than I at entries and have a higher success rate and actually move markets on the thin ones, so I mostly keep quiet unless I can offer something that was missed. The room is busy, I am pretty new there, and I feel only the best traders should be taking up the roll. Plus, this type of trade moves so fast that an entry call out is not really actionable by anyone else. Anyway, here goes:

"Buy low, sell lower", or "Too high to buy."

This radiolab episode is worth listening to, not only because it is well done and interesting (at least to me), but I think it is worth considering if these natural tendencies have sway over ones trading decisions, especially for long traders/investors. Are the best traders those 1 in 5 people?

tighter and tighter

How long has the market been tempting a run in the morning, only to pull back below lows of the day and threaten to deteriorate into a nasty selloff, only to rally back into neutral or break the high and finish near highs? Weeks, that is how long. I can only recall one day that turned into a trend down day (off the top of my head). So today the same thing happened. It will keep happening until it does not. That is the trend. Could end tomorrow, could be a week, a month, or 6. Could have 2 off pattern days, then right back to the pattern. So in keeping with this current pattern, I have been playing it light in the morning and heavier in the afternoon. It has served me well. I took modest positions in the morning, sold out of the weakness for a small drawdown, held on to what held up, and then laid it on thick in the afternoon, HSOL being the big winner today. Good day. I think the whole trading room was in on HSOL, so this was not some genius trade I ferreted out. It was such an obvious tight pattern, and the TAN was the leader on my industries watch list. So for now I continue in this manner.