Wed Mar 27, 2013 3:47pm ESTComments Off on Where’s the bear?
Wait a minute, wasn’t there supposed to be bear around here? Where did it go?
If the Bull can continue to piss on the bear then the bear may finally get the message- the BULL will take the GW2 by end of this week!
Take a look at the $SPY daily chart below:
Does it look like the bear is in control? No? I see more green bars than red. Not only that, I see the uptrend is still inside the uptrend line. On closer look, we are ALMOST there at GW2!
Get ready to celebrate an historical event of our mankind driving the stock market into an historical high again.
Yipee YapaDoo!
Oh, don’t mind me, I’ve been smoking too much $POT…
No, not the smoking kind; the stock $POT I’m talking about. This is another Sooz’s alert that I’m now convinced the bottom may be found.
Today nice green candlestick bar with a tail is a nice touch. It’s not exactly a hammer candlestick pattern since there is a hair sticking out of its head but because it is near a support area; who care?
I’m buying anyway.
Take a look at the daily chart below:
Did you see the momentum indicators (two of them, Wow!) turning up? This is good enough for me. You see, I’m an easy fellow to please when it comes to bottom fishing…
I tried to buy back $FB after I dumped it this morning because of the gap-down open; but the retracement never came. So, I did what anyone who wanted in do; buy at the market just to get in for the starter position.
Take a look at the 15m $FB chart below:
I had a buy order at $25.50 and it was completely ignored ’cause price just kept going up. The rally is very strong and this could be a catalyst for the bounce back up to the $30.xx range.
Take a look at the massive bullish engulfment bar in the daily chart right now:
It cut through the 5 moving average and broke thru the high of the last four days. I just added more $FB because price kept going up.
A special thanks to Sooz who alerted me of $FB last week which I added to my “to watch” list.
Wed Mar 27, 2013 10:31am ESTComments Off on When does seesaw becomes a whipsaw?
It is when you are whipped for putting chewing gum under a public park seesaw in Singapore.
Today is a day to be cautious. I sold all my swing trades pronto at open without thinking much. All for small losses. I even reduced position size on $SZYM with the intent to buy them back cheaper.
So far, all mini-rallies are being countered with a bear attack; therefore if you are thinking about bargain hunting, you may want to put a tight stop “just in case”.
Some of you may wonder why I’m so stubborn on my $AMRN trade and have chosen to sit through an ugly downtrend instead of abiding by my own discipline of cutting my loss and buying them back cheap.
Well, there is a reason why I call this a “position trade” from the get go. Remember, I made that decision at the time I decided to load up (averaging up) when I was still in-the-money on the trade.
From the past, I had made similar calls to some of the stocks I believed to be “game-changer” or “visionary” but without the kind of conviction I’ve right now with $AMRN; thus, I loaded up BIG but sold too soon and missed the whole “game-changer” and “visionary” uptrend because I was either too busy or waiting for a retracement that I forgot to follow-through. So, this time, I said to myself, “I’m not going to make the same mistake with $AMRN.”
Below were the trades I left quite some money on the table:
1) Loaded up on $SNFT (before they changed their name to $NUAN) because I believed their voice recognition software was a key component of technology trend at the time. My average price was around $3.xx and price gyrating between $2.xx and $7.xx for a long long time and it began to wear me out. Finally price went back up to high $7 and I threw in the towel by selling all my shares at mid-$7 because I didn’t want to go through the pain of watching it falling back below $7 which I had witnessed so many times. Price then proceeded to head higher after I sold. I was too “yellow belly” to buy back at $8 because I didn’t want to give back my gain after a long-period of frustration. $NUAN is now trading at $20.00.
2) Loaded up on $LNG when it was trading at $3.xx. At the time, I believed in this stock and its fundamental so much that I literally had a large stake on this one. I had about 13% of my portfolio betting on this stock and I told myself I would hold this one long-term. Price shot up to $6 and promptly fell back to $4. The volatility was insane! Instead of sticking to my conviction, I sold out when price went back to $5.00 for a decent profit. While price continued to spike up and down in great speed either way, I lost my appetite after swing-trading $LNG for some quick profit here and there. $LNG is now trading at $26.00.
3) Loaded up on $BIDU when it was trading at $110.00 before the split. It was during one of those anti-BIDU sentiment and $BIDU dropped in price from high $300.00 to low $100.00. Because my conviction wasn’t there, I sold at $130.00 and forgot about the stock. $BIDU is now trading at $86.12 after split (pre-split would be $861.20).
4) Loaded up on $AMRN when it was trading at $3.xx. After it went to $7.00, I got nervous and sold it for profit. Since then, I began to swing trading it for profit. Then one day, it so happened I did not have any position at the time, $AMRN gapped up to $16.xx and headed to $19.xx before heading back down. I knew I would have sold it b/w $16.xx and $19.xx if I had held my full-size position.
Now, if I don’t learn from the lessons above, it will be all for naught. So I told myself that, this time, I’m not going to let this volatility on $AMRN get the best of me. Therefore, I’m holding this one through the end. The one thing that allows me to hold this one through thick and thin is that I did not average down along the way. I set my worst case loss scenario at my original investment (I doubt I will lose the whole thing since they do have a patent on pure EPA (icosapent ethyl); thus, I’m not faded by current $AMRN downdraft.
One more thing, because I made money back then with $AMRN when I loaded up with more shares than I’m holding now, this drawdown is simply my paper loss against my previous realized gain. This fact does ease my mind in a way giving the current price of $AMRN is in a deep malaise.
Remember folk, this is strictly for position trade, I hold no such tolerance and conviction when it comes to my swing trades. Swing trade is strictly for profit-taking when you see it. Since the position size is much smaller, missing the runners here and there is part of the game.
My current position trades are: $LRAD, $AMRN, $SZYM, & $TINY and I intend to hold these as long as their technological fundamentals remain intact.
Today is an up day after landing on the support zone. When I see price action acting positive on a support zone after a downtrend, I consider it a low risk trade in trading a bottom. I buy with a stop below the day low which often gives me a low risk trade.
Needless to day, I bought a starter position on $FB with a stop below intra-day low.
Mon Mar 25, 2013 12:31pm ESTComments Off on This stubborn bear is beginning to annoy…
Take a look at the 15m $SPY chart below:
The market opened and rose up nicely and then had a waterfall price drop to show for the day. If you are not annoyed then I take my hat off for you. But my internal radar alerted me to move to cash; therefore, I spent all morning liquidating all my swing trades position and raised my cash to 50% as well. (I said ‘as well’ because I just read The Fly posted that he was also at 50% cash.) Thus, in a manner of speaking, I fired all my swing trade positions today. However, due to an incessant pleading from $DCTH, I hired it back for a temporary basis to see if it can prove itself to make me some dough.
Take a look at the daily chart below, if the bear has its way, price action may just as well drop below the GW1 support. Sometimes, it is better to be safe than sorry.
Sun Mar 24, 2013 12:02am ESTComments Off on Who’s the boss? You or your stock?
I’m sure most of you know what it is like to be a boss or an employee.
If you are not the boss, then all your effort goes to please the boss. And if you are the boss, all your effort goes to manage the employees. And if you are the middle manager, then you have to please your high up and manage those below you.
Well, guess what, investing is pretty much about the same thing; but there is one big distinction. It is YOUR money you are investing: therefore, YOU “should be” the BOSS.
Aha!
I added the “should be” not for effect but to reflect how we let the employees (aka stocks) get away with not doing what they are hired to do- to make you money.
For those who are or were bosses, you know what I’m talking about.
On one extreme, if you are a tough boss, you pretty much have a strict guideline for the employees to follow. And if your employees don’t follow those guideline, you write them up and inform them of their deviation from the guidelines. And if they ignore your written warning, they are setting themselves up by providing you with reasonable ground for termination. Simple at that.
Now…
On the other extreme, if you are an amiable boss who care more about the employees than your company’s mission, you may become too lenient to your employees who are not productive, not fit for the job, not being a team player, and worst of all, do not have integrity. You become more susceptible to manipulation by the employees who are good at kissing your behind…
Before I go on, to be fair, there are excellent bosses out there who are both amiable and tough at the same time. And these are the bosses all companies are lucky to have.
Well, I think you have a pretty good idea of where I’m going here.
It is interesting that while most of you are/were tough bosses in the business world, you become quite an amiable boss with your stocks. Hmm…
Why do we, as an investors, tend to become the amiable boss who let our stocks get away with non-performance? Why don’t we just fire the stocks the way Donald Trump does it in the video below?
Come on now, if your mission as a trader (aka your organization) is to make profit from swing trade/short-term trade, your job is to fire those stocks that don’t perform. In other words, you need to be an extreme tough boss if you are a swing trader or short-term trader. Otherwise, you are letting your employees (aka stocks) do what they please as your company’s expense (aka your portfolio’s expense).
Scalper: stocks are like temp; if they don’t perform, replace them immediately.
Swing trader: stocks are like new employees on probation; if they don’t perform, let them go before the probation period expires.
Position trader: stocks are like project managers; if your have sufficient evidence that the project manager is not working out after a period of time, replace the project manager.
Whatever you do as a boss (investor/trader), do NOT become the boss as shown in the video below…
In other words, do not fall in love with your employees (aka stocks).
With $AAPL restoring back to its darling status, who needs $BBRY?
I saw weakness in the $BBRY all morning and failed one short attempt; but when $BBRY breached the $16 level, that had to be the tell. So I shorted $BBRY again.
Look at the 3m $BBRY chart below. Did you see the waterfall price action? I love waterfall price action when I’m trying to short; and I loathe waterfall price action when I’m long.
Take a look at that beautiful waterfall from the courtesy of $BBRY:
I guess rumor of $AAPL launching new iPhones in the summer isn’t helping the Blackberry trees…
Fri Mar 22, 2013 2:12pm ESTComments Off on Consolidating in the twilight zone… Oop! I meant twi-walls zone
Today $SPY bounce confirmed the solidity of Giant Wall One as a support. Thus, price action is now consolidating inside the two Giant Walls.
I see this as a confirmation that the bear is not winning the war here; otherwise, $SPY would have fallen under GW1 and created widespread panic. Last night before I went to bed, SP500 was printing negative 2.50 but I told myself that I would wake up to see a positive SP500; lo and behold, I was right. Why would I think that? That is because I see the GW1 as a huge support. You see, these two mythical walls from 2007 and 2000 hold a lot of psychological power among us simply because of its historical significance. Thus, each of these two walls can either be a powerful resistance or support. It just so happen that these two walls are in the vicinity of each other that we have a twi-wall zone that holds such unfathomable power.
Consider ourselves lucky to be witnessing such historical price interaction inside these two mythical walls. Due to the steeper angle of this current rally, my money is that we are taking out GW2 shortly.
Take a look at the daily chart below and you will understand where I’m coming from:
