$GLUU looks like it is repeating price action movement of early April. A dip below base line of $2.75 and a bounce back to the upside. Meanwhile, the 79 moving average line is trending up slowly.
Take a look at the chart below:
Both momentum indicators are also pointing up.
I bought a starter position and added more afterward.
I like to see price heads back up to the last pivot high of $3.25. Not expecting a big move, hence breakfast only.
My 2 cents.
Comments »Today was a lack of conviction day.
Market open negative but that was just the outer appearance only.
However $AAPL looked strong pre-market so I was ready to “get-the-hell” out of my put option at market open. Lo and behold, $AAPL opening price actually dropped at open so I was able to get out with only a scratch. Whew!
$MNKD looked strong pre-market even after a strong Friday up day. After reviewing the chart, I can see more potential on the upside; therefore I decided to “chase” this one. I bought starter position not too long after open.
$CERS opened strong and I wanted to buy in. But the price was high at open so I waited. I didn’t have to wait long since price dropped back down to the low $4.9x rather quickly. I took the opportunity to buy a starter position and then continued to add as price climbed. I am in the money by end-of-day. Let’s see if I’m corrected to buy this one when tomorrow comes.
Since $AAPL opened strong, I bought a starter position. But being mindful of the negative DOW, I placed a stop order below intra-day low and it was taken out soon afterward.
I also placed a stop order on $IMMR below Friday low and got stopped out as well for small losses. Unlike The Fly who believes in $IMMR to the core, I did not have the conviction to hold. By end of the day, The Fly wins again on $IMMR. His conviction is strong and unparalleled.
Regarding $SZYM, please read my previous post since I covered my trading log there. The quick summary is simply that I didn’t have the required conviction to hold this one thru volatility.
I stumbled on $CUR during chart browsing and I liked the cup & handle chart formation. Price action looked like it wanted to go break out soon so I bought a starter position and later added more.
$KERX also looked promising and I had been watching this one for awhile. I finally bite the bullet and bought a starter position. By end of day, I am in the money. Thank you!
Except for $AMRN who continued to rally nicely today, I did not have a banner day like The Fly or others. My portfolio gain today was modest. However, my portfolio is a sum total of my decisions and I feel that, in due time, I will have my days. Both $AMRN and $LRAD will be the highlight of my portfolio by year-end.
While the rabbits are running fast and fury ahead of me, I’m a tortoise who just keep on moving despite some minor setback.
Current holdings:
AMRN, LRAD, TINY, CERS, CUR, KERX, MNKD and 37% gain.
The trades I made in the journal were time-stamped in twitter
Comments »Despite a negative DOW, there are a lot of short squeeze happening all around. The Fly and his team are raking in gain left and right.
However you need to be fast and nimble to take advantage of these momentum plays. If you are, chasing can be rewarding if you are early in the game; otherwise, quick gain can become quick loss when you are not looking.
If you want to chase but is not so nimble, I suggest you use a stop based on intra-day low for protection.
For myself, I bought $CERS, $KERX, $MNKD, and $CUR at higher price which definitely fell into the category of “chasing”. I picked these because the charts looked good for further breakout. But I’m also aware of the need to be quick on cutting losses here.
For my $SZYM trade, truth be told. I was shaken out of my $SZYM early in the morning for wanting to lock in my gain. Based on the turn of event later in the morning (hindsight), it is safe to say that the short was getting nervous and embarked on a short campaign to drive the price lower which stopped me out. But the downdraft was short-lived. Buyers began to come back and drove the price back up which caused the shorts to cover en masse. I bought back some at the low $10.xx but not enough to partake on the great momentum later in the morning. I was away from my desk! Later, I chased the price by buying on breakout of the intra-day high @ $10.7x. Priced proceeded to head higher to $11.00 and I added a bit more. Unfortunately, all good things don’t last for too long. Price began to fall and I moved my stop quickly to lock in gain for 50% of the buy-back shares. I was stopped out later. As price continued to decline, I sold another layer for breakeven to bring me back to starter position.
So far, the chase on $SZYM had brought me a small gain which I considered a waste effort. Yes, if I had held on to my original position from the morning, I would have made a lot more; but I learned not to think like that anymore. Once I was out from my early shake-out, $SZYM became a new play with its own risk profile for my re-entry. You can’t let the “coulda, shoulda” affect you as a trader; otherwise, you can paralyze yourself with remorse and self-criticism that you may end up not trusting yourself in the future.
As a trader, you MUST learn to trust yourself regardless of past decisions you made. The market is hugely volatile and will take no prisoner. So, accept your decision and move on.
So far, my chase on the above named stocks have been neutral at best.
There you have it. If you are thinking that you are missing the boat by not chasing, you can rest easily that it is not the case here.
Be careful out there!
My 2 cents.
Comments »Last time, I talked about bringing intensity to the thought process in order to amplify the mind power. While this is simple to understand in theory, it is going to take a lot more to pull intensity out of thin air to power your thought process. In my Grand Canyon trip, it was a matter of survival; therefore, my will to survive bring forth the intensity I needed to push myself onward. Without the will, I would just lie down and give up.
As a trader, how do we bring forth our will to raise intensity to our thought process so we can follow through with the proper trading process to succeed in trading?
Before I go on, I like to remind everyone that intensity in thought process is a double-edge sword. If the intensity lies on good intention with a positive thought process, you can create wonderful things; on the other hands, it can bring darkness to your life that are filled with sadness, sickness, and destruction (of self and other) if the intensity lies on bad intention with a negative outlook of life.
We already know how to bring forth intensity automatically by getting emotional about things or events. If we are happy, our day lightens up more than normal; that is intensity. If you encounter a bad news that affects you deeply, your day is filled with sorrow, sadness, and anger; that is intensity.
Ok I get it. So how do we summon intensity to help our trading mind without getting emotional about things. As you’ve already told us zillion of times, emotion is bad for trading!
Knowing that you can summon intensity with the emotion gives you clue that intensity is yours to take if only you know how to tap into it.
Ok, how?
By using the power of focus on your thought process. You summon your will to “focus”. When you get emotional about something, your thought process is being “focused” on one thing. The only one thing that you are emotional about. Because of the mind & body relationship, the intense focus of your thought process spills over to your body and cause you to have a body reaction such as butterflies in your stomach, an ecstatic episode, etc.
Your will is your 100% commitment to a single thought process that overrides other thought processes in your head. Even your natural mind (aka ego) do not have enough power to overcome it.
In my Grand Canyon example, I was 100% committed to survival. I wanted to survive so much that I found a solution to fight off the weakness of my starving body by focusing only on my foot and the one step movement. There were no other thought than my foot and the one step. I was free of my ego and I didn’t even know it. By the time I was at the top, I didn’t care how I look or how I appeared to others (caring about what other people think is the ego domain). I grabbed anyone who walked by me, which was something I wouldn’t normally, and asked for information.
However, in our normal trading day, we are far from fighting for physical survival. We are only fighting for a number that resides in our banking system- money. Most of us aren’t foolish enough to put 100% of the money into the stock market. Most will put aside money for general living expenses and invest some into the market. While losing the money allocated to the stock market may put a dent to your life-style, it is not going to kill you or put you on the street. Hence, most lack the will to draw on the intensity to the thought process to improve trading success.
“Oh well, I don’t need the money right away, I can wait out the drawdown for all the stocks in the portfolio,” was the usual thought process for a lot of people. Basically, a lot of us don’t mind being a bagholder.
Of course I mind!
Ok, let me clarify. A lot of us prefer to take the risk of being a bagholder than to take the effort to do the right thing by cutting losses quickly.
Hey you! What about your $AMRN and $LRAD trades? Ain’t you a bagholder on them as well?
Oop! You got me there!
But there is one difference between my being a bagholder on $AMRN and $LRAD and most bagholders in general. I’ve “assigned” $AMRN and $LRAD as position trades with the express purpose of waiting out their fundamental success from the very beginning.
Yes, my position trades on $AMRN and $LRAD are underwater from my re-entry point but I’ve done my research and am willing to allocate a percentage of my portfolio for “speculation” purpose.
Meanwhile, s lot of bagholders hold ALL their stocks in their portfolio and ride the whole portfolio down along with the general market correction. In my humble opinion, this is poor portfolio management,
Do you see the difference?
Like I said, most people only have their investment portion of their money in their portfolio; therefore, while they don’t like the pain of the drawdown of all their stocks in the portfolio, the drawdown won’t kill them.
“I can wait it out.” is the usual response.
It is your money and it is your freedom to manage it the way your ego wants it.
But do you catch my drift here?
There is absolutely no incentive for most people to summon their will to become a better trader/investor. Nada!
Simply because the effort is very hard.
It is very hard to focus intensely on the proper trading thought to overcome the ego desires to be right.
It is very hard to maintain the focus on the proper trading thought to overcome the ego desires to be right.
It is very hard because it will require a lot of your energy and commitment to stay focus. Most people will prefer to engage in other forms of entertainment than to waste it on trading discipline.
For all I know, you work very hard during your day and you just don’t have the energy and time to maintain the focus for the trading effort.
The point I’m making here is that to have a shot at becoming a successful trader/investor, you have to take the extra miles to get there. And most successful people know that. Those who make millions or billions in the business world know that; that is why they hire the best money manager they can find to manage their money. They know they don’t have the time to become a successful trader on their own.
But if you want to manage your own money, you have to step up. You have to summon the will to focus on the proper trading process and do the right thing.
The intensity is there for you to take it to your trading mind. You just need to take the effort to focus on it.
At the end of the day, the question you have to ask yourself is, “do you want to take the effort to overcome the inertia and your natural mind to become a successful trader?”
It is all up to you.
You are what you think.
Your reality is a sum total of how you think.
You can enhance your reality by bringing positive intensity to your thought process or you can let your reality stay the same by remaining in the same thought process you have now.
But even then, spending the time and hard work can only increase your probability of success. It doesn’t guarantee success. Your ego is a very powerful entity. You may think you have it under control using the intensity I’ve discussed. But your ego has patience. It can wait for your moment of weakness. Jesse Livermore, one of the past great trader in our financial world, succumbed to his ego at the end.
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Keep it simple. Just bring enough intensity/focus so you can bypass your natural mind to cut losses quickly. Cutting losses quickly is by far the most important and yet a simple action to perform on your way to become a successful trader. As we all know, simple is not the same as easy.
My 2 cents.
Comments »Today was a recovery day.
Market opened with a yoyo fashion.
I like The Fly’s thesis on $IMMR and the chart looked good. I bought after the open. As price continued to advance, I added more. Alas, it didn’t last. As price started to turn and took out the $14 support line, I began to wonder if I had bought too early. Once price dropped below $13.80, I had it. I reduced position size to cut losses and wait for better climate before jumping back in with both hands. I like the fundamental thesis but not enough to hold it as a position trade even though this is a position trade for The Fly. In summary, even though I picked a stock somebody like, I still need to trade it according to my own style.
$SZYM continued to run higher after open and I added without hesitation. When it took out the $10 resistance price line, I added more as well. Seeing that price action is still positive after the cup and handle breakout, I feel more comfortable holding this one without taking quick profit for now. I may hold this as position trade if price continue to advance higher.
I saw RaginCajun’s alert on $TSL and $YGE in twitter and decided to jump in on $YGE because I traded this one before. The risk was low with stop below yesterday low; hence my easy quick decision to jump in after seeing the alert. Price continued to advance after I got in so I added more. I started using a trailing stop to protect profit seeing that today is Friday and I was fearful of an en masse profit-taking that would take away my profit when I wasn’t looking. After getting stopped out, $YGE headed back up before close. Oh well. I’m not going to complain about taking profit from a swing trade.
$TINY earnings report reflected that their book value is higher than its current market cap. Seeing that the market would eventually take price action back to the book value, I added more. Unfortunately, price action decided to take a yawn and went back to sleep. Oh well, since this is my long-term position trade, I left it alone.
I saw $AAPL price action tracking in negative territory even though the DOW had recovered back to positive area; this was not a good sign per my book. I decided to buy a June 7th 455 put option for a roll-the-dice play. Let’s see where my dice rolls Monday morning.
Meanwhile, $AMRN, $LRAD, and $SZYM were all trending higher today. Because I’ve large position on these three stocks, my portfolio recovers nicely today.
Current holdings:
AMRN, LRAD, SZYM, TINY, IMMR and 38% cash.
The trades I made in the journal were time-stamped in twitter
Comments »$AAPL down bar today reflects a confirmed correction to the downside simply because it has taken out the low of the bar from Tuesday, May 7th. The daily bars of Wednesday and Thursday failed to take out the Tuesday low; therefore, the trend was still up as far as I was concerned. However, today bar took out Tuesday low and price action was in the vicinity of the 89xma resistance line.
$AAPL price correction today could as well be a minor and healthy retracement. Nevertheless, I will watch for support on the 38.2% Fib retracement level at $434.75 which also happen to be near the support line from April 11th high.
Take a look at $AAPL daily chart below:
I bought June 7th 455 put option to short $AAPL. I’m betting that $AAPL correction will try to reach $435 support area before bouncing.
If there is going to be a mini-market correction, it may start next Monday and $AAPL will follow the market with it; otherwise, I will sell my put option pronto Monday morning to cut losses if the rally continues on.
My 2 cents.
Comments »Today was a shake-out day.
Market opened with a negative bias and my swing-trade alerting mode kicked in.
The problem with my swing-trade alert mode is that I like to “get the hell” out of a position when the overall general market condition is negative. Since I hadn’t designated $BIDU as a position trade, it was a prime candidate for me to take the money and run. I did exactly that in the morning and lo and behold, I found out later I was shaken out of my position. A few rattle on the bottle of $BIDU and out popped Zenhunter’s position. Oop! Of course, $BIDU continued higher for the day without me. Nevethless, this was different from $CVI which I got out when price was higher; $BIDU was down when I got out. Therefore, $BIDU was business as normal for my trading mind while $CVI was a pure ego play which it chose to ignore my trading mind to put a stop in lieu of jumping the gun.
After getting out of $BIDU, it was naturally that I also wanted to get out of $YNDX. Price action was on the defensive at the time so I sold $YNDX for tiny losses.
$CTSH was holding well so I decided to move my stop to breakeven just in case. It was holding well for awhile but eventually price pressure brought the price down and I was stopped out.
$SZYM opened higher after earnings announcement. I wanted to get back in so I waited a bit. Price eventually came down a bit and I bought a starter position. Later in the day, (I was away for awhile), price shot up and settled back down at $9.45 area. I added more at that level.
IMHO, $AMRN’s earnings report was in line. After hour price was holding steady; but the real reaction will be based on tomorrow price action.
All in all, I was shaken out of my three swing trade positions- $BIDU, $YNDX, and $CTSH with my cash raised to 48% which wasn’t a bad thing to end the day with DJIA taking a breather here. I’ll be looking to buy back some names at cheaper prices if I can.
Current holdings:
AMRN, LRAD, TINY, SZYM and 48% cash.
The trades I made in the journal were time-stamped in twitter
Comments »
$SZYM reflects a beautiful cup and handle breakout pattern today with relative high volume.
Take a look at the daily chart.
It is important that price action stays above the $9.50 support line and not fall back underneath it going forward. Giving the catalyst of increased capacity will be “on schedule” in the near future according the the earnings CC call, the possibility of price action heading higher is good.
I finally bought back some position this morning to take advantage of the early downdraft. Although I’m not holding as much as I used to (I wish I did); but that is ok since I’ve to manage the risk I’m in on this one. Risk management comes with the price of missing some money on the table IF price action reacts in your favor; on the other hands, reducing my position will also reduce the damage if price action reacts negatively. So, I’ll have to look at $SZYM price action on a going forward basis. In other words, I will add only if price action continue to go higher. The number of shares I used to own is no longer relevant to my current risk profile and I will have to trade accordingly based on price action.
My 2 cents
Comments »Today was a sleepy day.
Market opened with a positive bias but that was the last thing I was concerned.
$DUST opened down and I waited a bit to see if there were any bounce. After the first 5m bar was over, the 2nd bar did not do any better; so I sold to cut loss pronto. And it was a good thing I did, $DUST continued to head south afterward. Again, this is further proof that it pays to cut your loss quickly. While I had to swallow the loss of $5 per share on my trade, it was much better than to sit on $15 dollars per share loss by the end of the day.
$NFLX had an orgasmic moment after a couple of 5m bar movements and I was not going to argue against such a strong burst. I immediately took profit on my put option when there were still some to take.
$BAC was moving up so I added more. Later, when $BAC began to show weakness after the burst, I moved my stop to breakeven and it was hit. The reason why I moved my stop to breakeven so quickly was because I felt that $BAC movement somehow was limited in its range of movement given the money I had to tie up with it. So, I was not disappointed when I was stopped out at breakeven to free up my cash.
$BIDU was moving up and I added more. Although $BIDU did correct a bit in the morning after a burst, it did not correct the way $BAC did; therefore, I was more comfortable holding $BIDU since its potential range of movement was much larger, imo.
Seeing $BIDU was doing well, it reminded me of the Russian version $YNDX. I took a look at the chart and realized I missed the $7 run from the last two weeks. Seeing that they had good earnings result, I decided this was the catalyst we needed to see for future upward movement. I bought a starter position and later added a bit more.
$SZYM was not fairing well, so I sold 1/3 of my position to reduce position. Later, I sold the rest just to get some peace of mind from the earnings result that would come after the close.
While browsing thru some chart, I came across $CTSH that I used to trade many years ago. This stock acted like it was ready to bounce back up from good earnings report. I bought a starter position to see if it would work.
There wasn’t much action on my end for the day and I took a nap during market hours; hence a sleepy day.
Current holdings:
AMRN, LRAD, BIDU, TINY, YNDX, CTSH and 33% cash
The trades I made in the journal were time-stamped in twitter
Comments »Remember $CTSH?
$CTSH had a monster run from a low $14 to $83 from late 2008 to early 2011 before it started having hiccup over the next two years. I believe the current hiccup has come to a conclusion and price may just be heading back up soon.
Take a look at the weekly chart below:
Take a close look at the weekly chart again:
As you can see, this week may confirm the Bullish Harami weekly candlestick pattern for a bullish reversal. Momentum indicators are also coming back up from the low point.
Take a look at the daily chart below:
Price took off after positive earnings report and the momentum may continue with the 5 ma line crossed over the 15 ma line today.
My 2 cents.
Comments »
