After FSLR reported weak numbers after hours we saw shares of YGE making a sympathy move lower.  As you all very well [should] know, I sized up my YGE position yesterday.  In fact, I made it full size.

A quick yet perhaps excruciating read of my reactionary opine may give you insight into how I really felt upon receiving my judgment from the market.  Since The STOP Method© is not only preserving but building my emotional capital in futures trading, I thought it best to apply the tool to my YGE trade.  Let’s have a look, shall we?

The cue on the YGE trade is a slight variation.  I haven’t yet been stopped out but from what I saw taking place afterhours and the overall sell flow in the indices, this trade may take some heat.  We’re being proactive.

THE CUE: “WE GONE TAKE SOME HEAT”

 

THE ROUTINE: Stop Method

 

 

• S – Score trades compliance with the trading plan:

Here’s a post on the YGE plan, but I’ll tell you the main talking points and show
you the chart:

Like I said, I corrected course and I’m still riding the name, including taking half my position up Friday’s ramp, so I’m still pretty excited about this trade, all things considered.  Now that I’ve booked some profits, and have a green cushion, I’m sticking to the following plan for the YGE trade, including riding though earnings, if necessary, to achieve my $5.00 target.

The trade carries risk down to $3.25.  And to be honest, that price level is a bit mushy.

I sized up around four bucks and I had a 1/3 position hanging around from $3.09.  The buys brought my cost basis up to $3.70.  I’m targeting $4.30 for my first scale and ~ $4.85 for my second.

The trade carries around a 2:1 risk/reward, and my plan for trading stocks is pretty simple: Trade the pullbacks in trending stocks.

Is YGE trending?  I trade from daily charts, yes it is.

Is YGE pulling back? Yes

At full size on $3.70, with a stop of $3.25, the trade is risking 1 percent of my portfolio.  Perfect.

Trades compliance with the plan: 100% “Oh yeah”

• T – Target logical price levels:

• O – Observe the trend:

• P – Patiently wait for your next opportunity.

For this situation, I’ve fired all my buy bullets, and I have three of four sell bullets loaded in the chamber.  My only opportunity at this point is to stop the trade out, or scale profits.  Until we reach logical levels, I have no reason to sell in any way, shape, or form.

So now we wait as that stock operator fellow who killed himself said.  Odd his writings are immortalized when he’s such a coward, no?  Here’s to hoping evil algos don’t read my blog!  ::clink clink::

Oh and also, let us not forget the reward for such actions…

THE REWARD: BOSS

http://youtu.be/2YcIgow6TDk

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The popularity pendulum has swung again, and the bunker lifestyle is back en vogue.  This trend, like parachute pants, may not last long, but goodness it is fun while it lasts.

Home gamers and pros alike will spend today clamoring over a small basket of stocks.

For the patient types, RGLD

For the-runner-the-gunner, EXK

For the degenerate gamblers, any-and-all-miners

I was quick to engage,”gangnam style” this morning via EXK as it sports my marque setup which caught my eye over the weekend.  It should have caught my eye Friday when I was in my summertime coma.  I’m not caring so much.

Here’s my plan, as you can see I’ve jumped the gun a bit:

The plan is a trigger above $3.75, target 1 is $4 (6.7% gain), target 2 is ~$4.50 (20% gain), then you just let the final piece ride and see if the big bankers want to turn this thing around. Risk is below $3.40.

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And here’s the plan:

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I was having a modestly red day in the futures, but I stuck around and traded through the Ben, and now I’m happy to go home very green!

I bought two dips, sold two rips…Ben is a really good guy.

There was so much selling pressure today, especially after the FOMC pop was faded, that I knew any upward momentum could get these shorts running for their dear, stupid, lives.  And Ben delivered the crack rock.  As a matter of fact, he’s not even satisfied with the 6.5% unemployment threshold initially rolled out during the taper talks.  He’s convinced we’ll need to keep on easing well beyond that, blessing the market with capital gains until everyone is back to work.

Obviously this news is very bullish for TPX because, as unemployment drops, procreation must increase.  The safest way to procreate is within the confines of your bed.  So get a nice one, yes?

Anyone want to take bets on where we open tomorrow?

It’s a long way until 9:30am…

I’ll quickly run through today’s portfolio adjustments:

I dumped AAPL for a scratch after riding the name through a trough.  I can’t get excited about this name because it’s literally falling behind the power curve.  That’s dangerous in any business.  My assistant mocks my ghetto 4s about once a week and then changes the channels with her Galaxy.  It has the infrared beam like your teevee remote.  Plus I wanted to sell it at yesterday’s low, so why not sell it today, near the highs?  It can go to $1000 and I still won’t regret this decision.

I scaled off some Z as it pokes around near the all-time high.

I cut my ANGI long because I don’t have patience for it when YELP is crushing, Z is crushing, and ZNGA is flirting with me.  What was once a 6% gain was booked for a 5% loss.

All of this left me feeling cash heavy aka homo erotic.  So I scuttled into DDD and SD.  DDD is ¾ size and SD is ½ size.

I closed the day 80 percent long with TPX of course being my largest position because my top pick continues to be TPX, got it?

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Allow me to preface this performance report with a note about strategies, signals, and systems.  There are a million different ways to approach the markets.  Most approaches can be taken to profitability, and all approaches can make you insolvent. To consider one method better than another relies on the traders own subjectivity and how they view and comprehend an approach.  I prefer simplicity and risk management because it suits my fringe lifestyle.  I need a standardized method of assessing the risk a trade carries.  That way, if I get a strong appetite for an industry, like solar, I can find a vehicle I’m confident driving.

All of this is fine and dandy if you execute according to the plan.  Execution is where a trader is defined, and where money is made.  When your ‘signal’ trips you need to execute it.  Finding a signal and becoming intimately acquainted with it is the only way to consistently profit in the markets. When you take time to think, really think, you won’t be reacting and trying to think in the heat of battle, you can stick to the steady handed plan.

I had a really good thing going with the YGE trade and somewhere down the line I lost my vision and muffed it.  Fortunately, when I returned to my study and in the evening recognized my folly, I made preparations to correct myself.  My YGE trade net-net became profitable on Friday, but pales in comparison to the profits it could have generated had I stuck to the plan.

THE ORIGINAL PLAN – PRESENTED WITHOUT COMMENTARY:

THE EXECUTION – Green arrows represent buy points, red sell points, to date:

That, my friends, is poor execution.  I was swept into the sea of emotion on 06/20…do you remember how fucking nuts 06/20 seemed?  It was fake.

Hell, we never even lost the 33 EMA on a closing basis.  And we were clear above my risk parameter.

So what went wrong?  Poor execution, friend.  My takeaway is to keep position counts lower, allowing me to better assess my prescription risk plans before making decisions.  When 10 positions are all down big, sometimes you just pick the most painful one and slow the bleeding, even if it defies the plan.

Like I said, I corrected course and I’m still riding the name, including taking half my position up Friday’s ramp, so I’m still pretty excited about this trade, all things considered.  Now that I’ve booked some profits, and have a green cushion, I’m sticking to the following plan for the YGE trade, including riding though earnings, if necessary, to achieve my $5.00 target.  Behold:

 

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My swing portfolio wrapped up methodically giving back all second quarter profits today.  I don’t know how closely you follow along, watching Raul get crazy on the tape, but when I stand outside the fish bowl and see myself the sight is horrific.

Stupid greedy bastard little fish.

But I replay every trade I take.  I take notes, I brood.  I make plans to take over the world.

All this I say like some kind of awkward apology if you’ve hitchhiked onto any of the MANY losing trades I’ve taken recently.  I’ve been ADD trading, buying every tip, rip, and slip in the market.

No mas.

The overarching theme to my losers is bad entries.  High risk entries to be more precise.  It fucks with your confidence when it takes a 12 percent move to deem you “wrong”.  At least it messes with mine.  I compensate with smaller position sizes, but then I have 15 small positions clown raping me simultaneously and shit gets out of whack.  Pardon all my swearing, I’ve lost mucho dinero (no Robert).

It’s been one stop out after another, if you read me on the twitter network you’ve seen them peppered out over my timeline.  Brutal.

But now is not the time to sit in an inflatable pool of pity.  As a matter of fact, it’s never time for pity friend.  It’s time to pick yourself back up and be more powerful, more dangerous, MORE STUPENDOUS THEN EVER.

I started already by absolutely annihilating the liquidation break.  Red arrows are my short entries, blue my covers.  Look at this:

That’s the best god damned string of trades I’ve ever taken.  I should only trade during this madness because the rest of the time you’re cold sweating and grinding out 300 bucks. It’s disheartening to say the least.  To say the most it’s questioning every decision in your life that’s led you to trade futures.

The above string of trades is why I trade.  I crushed.  It felt amazing.  That’s my planned trade.  It cleared my mind, like making sweet love.  I made sweet love to the tape all over the place.   Anyhow…

If we’re entering range trading like I suggested last night, then we should be at or near the bracket lows.  Thus a mean revision should go down, taking us back into the 33 and 9 EMA.  That trade should earn some coin.  That’s why I bought ZION into the bell.  Banks make money with higher interest rates and ZION had some fantastic proprietary PPT stats going on.  So I took the trade.  Look at this entry, too.  It’s low risk, down to about 26.75 and relative strength to boot, not bad.

Tomorrow brings anything, being a quad witching and all, but we have the technology, the money can be rebuilt.

You would likely perfer the NSFW version of the following video, go find it:

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They’re showing up more and more.  Look around.  Check out the latest municipal project in a town near you.  Keep an eye on the businesses that you consider innovative and on the cutting edge, the LEDs are coming.

As you know, I’ve made my bed with CREE.  I’ll ride this stock to zero if need be.  The stock is up 85 percent year-to-date.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you, bang the drum, and play along for the duration.

We’ve played around with some other names, diddling really, trading the pumps in RVLT and LEDS.  That’s all I’ve conjured the conviciton to do because I find the companies to be shit, for lack of a better word.  But I’m getting the craving to commit more capital to an intermediate term idea.

With that in mind, I would like to turn your attention to Aixtron, ticker AIXG.  There is a lot to like here, so we’ll go through the following bullet points then we’ll look at the lovely charts:

1. They’re German
2. They have Chinese factories or “Training Facilities”
3. They have a sales office in California, where the gold is
4. They have a sales office in Israel, where the Israelites live
5. They don’t have a hovel website like other LED companies (cough, cough, LEDS)

All of that is nice, but you know what really matters most to me, the price charts.  Price is lining up on both the daily and weekly timeframes.  These foreign stocks trade awful intraday and often gap all over the place, but if you accept that, we’re looking at a nice risk entry.  This one also may be too thin for some of you bigger players.  Nevertheless, have a look:

You have to give it risk to $15, but PPT members, have a look at the proprietary statistics…we may not see much opportunity lower.  Either way, a smaller position size until the position starts to work or offers better entry for a double down may be the best way to play this name.

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“Make things as simple as possible but no simpler” – Albert Einstein

I know some of you don’t like posts about individual setups and I kindly invite you to take your reading elsewhere.  However, if banking coin is your top priority, more so than amusement, I suggest you add Chipotle to your watchlist this evening for potential long trades tomorrow.

Since I’ve just returned home and I’m in the sharing is caring mode I want to explain exactly how to trade this setup.  Young guys, listen up because you won’t get much advice like this for free on the internet.

A tight moving average like the 9ema (or 10 sma, 13 ema, etc.) is excellent to key off of because it’s close to the price action.  To get even closer, look at the open, high, low, close of the previous two sessions using daily candles.  With this information we have enough data to cue off of for a trade.

In the case of the CMG play, we like how price has behaved recently, check it out:

I’m already long this name, and took some profits before heading on vacation.  Now that it has pulled back in a reasonable manner, I’m ready to get back to full size in the name.  I want to see exactly the following occur to get me to buy more:

Take out Tuesday’s high

That’s it!  If it sounds simple, that’s because it is simple to trade.  Our first profit target is the most recent peak around $335.  If we approach those levels, closely monitor intraday action and find a good price to scale out.  Then keep a piece on in case the momentum picks up and the trade gets legs, the crème if you will.

Your risk is down to $314 so you’re risking $9 to make $12 on a setup with around a 68% win rate.  Believe me, the numbers work in your favor.  Just trade it well.

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