Friday 14 November 2008

Trades 14/Nov/2008

Initial Watchlist:
AAPL,AMGN,AMZN,BAC,ERTS,EXC,HIG,MET,MSCC,QCOM,

RIMM,SCHW,SLB,WYNN

MSCC (gap up)


After gap up, the price could not hold the previous day high after having bounced off decade $20 level. This made the stock weak in my view and so looking for a shorting opportunity.This came on the 4th candle during a market downturn.

Entry: 18.38 Stop:18.76
1R=17.98 2R=17.58 3R=17.18

I messed up my my stop on this, as I entered 18.66 by mistake. I was then stopped out during the sideways chop. Doesn't it always happen when you mess up !!!

SLB (gap down) (Weak Sector)


This was weak from the open as it couldn't hold the $50 level. Went short on the 5th candle as the market turned down again after a retracement.

Entry: 48.75 Stop: 49.10
Fib Ext: 48.08
1R=48.40 2R=48.05 3R=47.70

Closed half my position at 2R as this was also the Fib Ext and let the rest run. This was stopped out as I trailed my stop above $48.20 (1.5R). A decent gain overall.

EXC (gap down) (Weak Sector)

This was weak from the open as evident from first candle. The 2nd is IB NR7 which is in bottom 1/3rd of the OR. Went short on the 5th candle as the market turned down again after a retracement.

Entry: 51.13 Stop: 51.46
Fib Ext: 51.02
1R=50.79 2R=50.45 3R=51.11

We take partial at 2R and leave the rest to run. Just missed out on 3R as it bounced off the $50 level then exited the rest for 2R as well on a trailing stop. A nice gainer as well.

The SLB and EXC were sector based picks rather gap plays as such (although they did gap) which is something I'm currently looking into. Useful on day like today where gappers seemed hard to find. Also I used trailing stops today on these as they were trades within the previous day's range and more prone to trade in a range rather than my normal gappers which can trend beyond the previous day's high/low.

I didn't watch the market in last session today as all my trades had closed. Looks like I missed some big tradeable moves.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You are a great trader. Always have something new to trade in every kind of market. Like the way how you trade.

How do you know the weakest sector of the day? Also, how do you select stocks from that sector?

TraderAm said...

Thanks thomas.

Not sure I'm a great trader yet though...lol

Sector info is something I've just started to look at, so I'm still working out the best way to incorporate it into my trading.

I think there is a lot of software about which will give you the strongest/weakest sectors. (E.g Esignal, opentick, QT might even do it). A more recent one is http://finviz.com/ which has a heatmap showing sector strength and weakness and the stocks in each sector. It's not realtime, hence delayed but it is good.

I tend to look at weakest stocks in weak sector and strongest stocks in strong sector. Then see if their charts have clean price action.

Sometimes I just concentrate on gappers, but today they were scarce and so I had a look at Finviz which is where I got SLB and EXC from.

Thanks