Day 82 -$156 Trading Choppy Markets

All right, guys. Time for a midday market recap, go over the trades from today. For sure, obviously a bunch of trades today, but really didn’t make any headway. Finishing the day down $156. I stepped up to the plate, took a bunch of trades, but just didn’t get any big winners. I had one rough loss on OHGI which I jumped in maybe a little too fast. I’ll go over the, I guess, worst trade of the day first.

On this one we, as you can see, popped up here to a high of 240, then we pulled back just a little bit to 230. On this next candles we broke over 230. I saw that as a little micro pullback, so I got in for the move, thinking that this would break over 238, 240 and go up towards 250. Obviously ended up hitting 238, which is where I got filled with slippage. My fill was slow.

I got filled to 38, and then it dropped all the way down to 209. This candle dropped to 207, and then this one to 202. I sold it 208, so 2,500 shares following the rules, lost 30 cents, 750 bucks. That was a bummer. That one trade was the difference between this being a pretty decent day and a flat day. I mean, minus 150 is basically flat. That’s the tough thing, though, with share size restriction. It’s really hard to regain that type of loss without doubling or tripling up. Lost 750 there on OHGI, which was annoying.

Best trade of the day, Nvidia. A kind of surprise trade on $103 stock, but it was really just like picture perfect. You can see this setup here. We’ve got two four consecutive red candles, and this one came up on my reversal scanner right here. Actually, it was showing 13 consecutive candles making new lows, so I looked at that and I was like, “Okay, I got to take a peek at this.” I pulled it up and I saw on the one minute that we also had a pretty nice stretch of red candles, so when I saw that I was just like, “All right, well, first candle to make a new high is the place I want to get in.”

However, right here it dropped below 103. As it dipped below 103, I was watching for it to come back up over the whole dollar, thinking that if it could reclaim the whole dollar that that would show a pretty good level of strength. So I got in at 103 and I said, “Okay, I’m getting in a little early. I’m anticipating this. My stop is low today, which is 102.88.” I got in with 500 shares. Then, first candle to make a new high right here at 103.22 is where I doubled to 1,000 shares, now with like a 103.10 average. 1,000 shares, and you can see this made a move up to 142.

I sold half and made a move up towards 147, 148, I sold more, and then I was down to like 300 shares. Went up to 103.85, 103.92, and then it came back down here to 103.50. Took my profit on the way which was definitely the smart thing to do. When you get a trade that pops up 50 cents, definitely want to take a little profit off the table. Higher priced stock, but an easy trade.

No stress at all. Just got in, anticipated the first candle to make a new high, and it’s worth doing that when you have two, four, six, eight, 10, 12, 13 consecutive green candles. It’s worth taking a stab. They don’t always work, but this one was definitely worth it and it worked out pretty well. That was Nvidia, higher priced stock.

Second biggest winner of the day is CCCR. This one was kind of interesting. I mean, it wasn’t really as clean as I hoped it would be. I took a couple trades on this. The first trade was at the open at … Let’s see, I got in at, I think it was 48. I got in at 248 for the break of 250. Came up to 250, didn’t feel right, so I just sold it. Lost like 100 bucks. I got back in at 255. It instantly dropped down. I stopped out, I took the loss, and then I was watching right here to get back in over 250 and I was just a little too slow with my order to punch it at 250.

It pops up to 280, actually, all the way up to 295, and then it pulls back here on this micro pullback. Through here I added for the break over three, which we got. We got up to 308, but then it was a false breakout and then we dipped back down. I was a little unsure of whether it was going to be a solid breakout, so I started taking profit as soon as it was over three.

When it came back to 299 I sold the rest. Went from being red on the name to green with a nice little trade there on CCCR, basically buying the first one-minute pullback after this kind of squeezed right here.

Small trades on BASI, one trade. Didn’t get the follow-through I wanted, stopped out pretty quickly. You can see this one is all over the place. Same thing with CVXC. This one was sort of not clean, just Doji candles, sort of choppy, so no follow-through on that one. Small loss. Two small losses, and those were totally fine. It was this one that really annoys me because it just dropped 30 cents so fast. When that happens it’s hard to minimize the loss when it happens that quickly. That was the one sour spot in the day.

AUPH, this was first five-minute candle to make a new high. Wow, look at that. Holy cow. Oh, they’re doing a conference call. That’s right, I forgot about that. I took this trade right here in at 788 and sold on the move up to 797. I actually wanted to short this, thinking that we would get a false break of $8, but I don’t have shares available to borrow. Obviously I wouldn’t have held through this, or I probably wouldn’t have. This is from the conference call that’s going on right now. Anyway, so that’s AUPH.

GLBS, a little scalp on this one. I saw it hitting the scanners. Actually, I saw someone in chat calling it out. I got in this one on a micro pull back on the minute as well. Volume was coming in so I got in at 230, thinking that we would test the half dollar. We got a move up to 47 and then back down to 24. It was actually up quite a bit on this one, and then it pulled back so fast I was only able to get $200 profit, which was annoying.

Then RCII. I took a five-minute pullback setup on this one as well, which was solid, you can see right here, but it just didn’t really work. Best trade of the day was the reversal trade, and I was looking for other reversals that I could take, but we didn’t end up having any that to me really looked good. Obviously you can see some here, MLM, NTNX, ABM, BMY.

ABM is an expensive stock, so I didn’t go for that one. MLM, let’s see. This one, I think when it came up … Oh, this was the one that was expensive, $240. Just wasn’t feeling it for either one. MOS, at 11.15 I pulled up that one. I thought, “Well, it’s kind of double bottoming because it moved up, came back down. I don’t know that it’s really that stretched out,” so didn’t take a trade on it.

You know, today’s one of those days where I came into the market, did a bunch of trades, actually made $130 before commissions. Maybe I over traded two, four, six, eight, stocks. All of these were pretty much going for [inaudible 00:08:58]. Not trying to have that home run mentality, but just to look for small winners. 100 bucks here, 200 there.

Of course, any of them that had worked out really well had the potential to give me 500, 700 bucks, which right now would definitely be solid. Still restricting my share size and trying to be a bit more conservative than I was last month or the month before. As a result, I’m definitely trading more because I need to trade more in order to hit my daily gains, or my daily goals.

Obviously today didn’t hit that, but at the same time having a day where you lose 150 bucks is no big deal. That’s not a loss to stress about or to be bummed out about, really. If anything, I’m just bummed out that we didn’t see better follow-through in the market because I’d just love to see some really nice, clean action. But that’s okay. I’ll be back at it tomorrow.

The best thing is keeping those losses as tight as possible. If you have a red day or a day that’s not really clean that you don’t go really deep into the red, because then you’ll spend the next two days trying to dig yourself out of the hole. Now, I’m just down $156 versus yesterday. It’s not a big deal. With one trade I’ll be back. I’ll make that back.

All right, so let’s see. Plus, just writing this down on my calendar, so plus 156 and this is day 82 of the year. 82nd trading day of the year, and hopefully we see some better action this month, but for right now just going to continue to focus on reversals, trade a smaller size, a little trade here, a little trade there. Wait until we start to see some better follow-through in the market.

Then, once we do, I’ll get more aggressive. Until then, this isn’t really the time for me to really try to leverage my account or be aggressive. This is a better time for me just to be conservative. That’s it for today, and I will see you all first thing tomorrow morning. All right. Thanks, guys.