Playbook Review: $CLDX 02-26-2015

Title: Trading around secondary support level

Strategy Description: Secondary prices can create really really solid levels of support, where you can risk a couple of cents, and if the secondary proves to be successful get a really really decent move. Note that this strategy is slightly different to looking back at a secondary a few days later and determining that it's been successful and looking to get in.

Around the days of the secondary the secondary price will be defended heavily throughout trading hours.

Looking for strong price action prior to the secondary, or perhaps an enormous discount that allows the pricing to seem good.

Note that the level can be breached in the premarket, however you definitely don't want breaches in the market hours.

Look to get in premarket on a wash through the level, stoploss say 25-30c below. Cover risk into pops and then look for it to hold the level to the cent. From there get in quite large risking 5-10c and rinse and repeat. There is a decent chance of rinsing and repeating a couple of times, so you want to be selling bit more than half into pops.

Good liquidity will help quite a bit for limiting risk.

One thing to consider is that you don't really want to be stopping out above the secondary price, so it makes it a little difficult to add. You don't want to ruin your average!

Bigger Picture: Overall market will help out, however there is likely to be independent order flow.

Intraday Fundamentals: ATR=$1.50, ADV=2m, Rvol=3.67x, Market Cap=$2.2b, FS=25%. CLDX reported strong earnings about a week ago, which bolsters the bullish idea. The secondary price is $24.

Technical Analysis: $24 is a big level from a swing high in Jan. Then it represented the rough gap up from earnings. Then combined with the secondary price, probably makes it a little better than usual secondary prices.

Trade Management: I literally couldn't have played this better on the open so I included the chart with executions (blue is buy, red is sell). Load up $24, sell pop to $24.30-.50, reload $24.03 (with patience!!!), sell pop. Rinse and repeat.
I probably could have done a better job of capturing the pop to $25 later in the day with size, but I managed to get a few shares on a dip, so was good.

Trading Review: 02-26-2015

Intraday Trading: -$955 for the day. Overall horrible day. Traded first half of the day perfectly and was up a little over $1000 at one point (around 11:30am), despite only 2 of my ideas really working (EYES and CLDX). In the lunch-afternoon period my "confidence" in my underlying ideas which hadn't worked increased and I basically ended up compounding losses before eventually tilting for the last hour an a half or so.
The tilt wasn't anywhere near as bad as it could have been given how many of my ideas weren't working (more on idea generation process for each stock in individual descriptions).

Reflecting on individual goals:

(1) Controlling risk: Obviously risk wasn't very well controlled. However a couple of things stand out. The first is letting individual stock losses exceed the $300 limit I set. This was really a case of getting frustrated when my idea wasn't working, so trying it again. Poor trading. Secondly I didn't really use starter positions to my advantage, again this became worse as the day went on, I used starter positions perfectly on CLDX for example. Thirdly, it is absolutely ridiculous to go from +1000 to -1000, this is poor control of risk and too larger drawdown to experience when I am trying to improve my consistency.

(2) Focus on getting correct patient entries: I managed to do this perfectly on the open. On the open until about midday ish I was up enormously on CLDX and it was the only trade idea that had worked (along with small EYES). Despite this, I was near neutral on the other stocks I had traded at that point because I focused on getting the perfect entries. Later in the day, I lost this and had wider stop-losses. Again, when you go through individual trades it appears that they would have worked quite well with better entries, despite the "idea" not working.

(3) Overtrading: I actually managed to keep this relatively under control. Usually this is the area I lapse in when I go on tilt, however in this case my poor trading/tilt was more related to being patient for entries and controlling risk (size of negative on each stock, and letting drawdown be too large). Obviously I traded quite a few tickers today, but each of them was a reasonable idea I think.

(4) Scanning for ideas: Was plenty of stocks to trade today, and I did do some scanning, but didn't find too much extra. However, just as food for thought. This is a good idea when I take a decent hit on a stock to get me away from that stock and a fresh train of thought.

Overall, I am very happy with the way I traded in the morning, it was obviously a hard day with literally nothing working out fully. However, the afternoon was just atrocious and not acceptable. I think when I feel myself get frustrated like that I need to step away from the computer, log off the platform (so I can't see it), and just chill out for a bit. Perhaps play 15-20 minutes of micro stakes poker to get in the grinding meditative zone.

One thing I am contemplating, just as a temporary thing (this would be foolish longer term for limiting growth reasons), is to log off and stop trading when I reach +$1000. The reason being, that the simple act of doing this for the next week-month will hone in the focus on consistency. While it is true that if I had traded my ideas perfectly I would have ended the day >+$1000, the reality is that I'm not concerned about that if I am getting cocky/reckless when I'm up +$1000 on the day and using more size than I should be.

EYES: I had shorts to borrow in main account on the open, so I put up some offers into levels and got taken for 100 shares, then the borrows disappeared. At $12.89 I got short 400 shares in my back account for a swing trade down to mid 11s ish. I was going to close this 100 shares midday when it was holding, but decided to swing the 100 shares as well to ensure I didn't lose sight of the back account swing and what EYES price action was doing. Lucky I did keep the short!

NSM: Tried to get in on one of the 1c consolidations short and was wicked out. Re-entered, and covered risk, but never got what I was going for. Reasonably happy with trade, although a tad large for just a standard grinder trade.Interesting trading stock.

MBLY: Got long against the low at some point early in the day and was stopped out. Should have kept an eye on it, that midday move was quite big. Good RR trade, idea probably not the greatest in hindsight, given daily downtrend, holding below vwap etc.

LL: This and CRM were the stocks that really screwed me because I kept trying the same idea over and over again, when in reality I shouldn't have been so biased towards my idea. As mentioned earlier, focusing on entries would have same me some decent money, and probably allowed me to objectively view the price action rather than being biased.
From the mid morning action you can see that $50 was a good level to watch, and could be treated as an inflection, particularly because it coincided with vwap. So 11am when it reclaimed that you notice the change in character and look for long entries... But it's just moved $1.30ish in less than half an hour, so no point entering anywhere near there. Instead let it consolidate and tell you where the next entry is (patience!). The following washout to low $49s (which stopped me out of my small chase) was a sign of weakness, but also a good spot to load up if you were quick enough and biased enough for your view. Again the reclaim of vwap/$50 put bullish scenario back on point. But then it over/under vwap/$50, and then failed at the e/g test with a slightly lower high, this was the sign to quit the bullish bias (flexibility in bias), and realistically get short, either against $50 once it held below, or against $50.50 if you got a good enough entry. Remember that at about 1pm it had reversed off the lows, but had tried to get green and hold vwap for 2-3 hours and just couldn't convincingly.
Then late day I had my most tilted trade. Pissed off that there was a possibility my idea was going to work because it wasn't going to be on 60 minutes I chased it with 800 shares (huge position) and took about a $400 loss on that trade. Poor trading.

INOV: Tried to join the trend, but it couldn't hold green, so I cut it. Another example of an idea today that was fine but just didn't work.

FSLR: Tried a few low risk type trade, the first against the hod and previous days hod (purely a scalp, risk 10c for 30 type of thing) and then long into the midday support and g/r area. Both didn't work, which is frustrating, but that's just the way it is. Should probably have anticipated it to wash through vwap on that second one I guess, was just one wee downmove too early.

CYTX: This was freaking pathetic, this was a pure tilt trade and was too much size (2000 shares). I chased the new high of day, which was of course stuffed. Funny thing is I never liked it long compared to others like BIOC because of the enormous float, but as a tilted idiot I loved chasing the fakeout... Deserved the fate I got.

CYCC: I managed to play this one how I should have played CYTX, but it didn't work... Picked up some on dips but just didn't catch a late day bid so that's okay.

CYBR: Tried to join the trend late day, was wicked out by a nasty spike with spread so got back in (patiently!) but it just didn't work.

CRM: The other cock of the day... Gapped up on earnings, trending nicely in ah and pm... Was looking buy dips on open accordingly, and actually traded it quite well, although I missed some opportunities to lighten up, but did a great job of staying breakeven, and decently profitable at some points (where I didn't take enough off). Buys dips was working well, but then as it started to hold I began to average up looking for trend continuation (which is fine, it's a viable trade), but I need to look after my average a bit better. With appropriate trading I could have easily been (slightly) positive on this stock, despite having the wrong direction. I tried to buy into $69 around 2pm but just missed entry.
I drew some lines so you can sorta see what I was looking for, but yeah just didn't work (the downtrend one comes from premarket and was really consistent until broken).

CLRX: This was purely an impulsive trade. Was looking for an abcd, was too far off the secondary support level, once below vwap it was toast.

CLDX: Stock of the day. Traded small on open into the secondary price of $24. Premarket I think the secondary support price isn't as strong so you want to buy a wash below. Literally couldn't have traded this any better. Got size in the right places, covered risk quickly etc. Was probably a little top heavy at some points (i.e. hadn't taken enough off because I got such large (responsible) size near the bottom, but good stuff. This is a stock that I would have gotten into trouble with if I hadn't looked after my average because of the rinse and repeat back to $24 trade. Think I managed to rinse and repeat about 8 times!!! Purely for interest I counted how many shares I turned over on this stock, traded 13,400 shares!! Crazy stuff. Again, it was very responsible stuff as well. Risk >$0.10 for >$0.2, rinse and repeat. have included a zoomed in chart of the action around open where you can see my executions (red is sales, blue is buys).

AAPL: Played the AAPL moves with the options, rather than the the underlying. Basically tried to fade the move from red to green for a scalp (which obviously didn't work), and probably wasn't a good idea given the rumours/news whatever it was with TSLA. Later I nailed the fade, and you can see the RR was worth it (I didn't even hold it the correct amount of time!). Tried to reload long around r/g but missed executions on calls.

EDIT: Looking back, there were a couple of improvements which would have limited losses (ignoring the tilt). The main one being that starting in positions lighter, would have enabled scaling at better prices etc, thus helped a lot with those stocks that I didn't have the right bigger picture idea on.

Playbook Review: $LL 02-25-2015

Title: Fading Extreme Panic: BOJ Criminal Charges

Strategy Description: Every now and again there will be some serious news like an SEC investigation or something similar. This causes stocks to go completely belly up. When you hear news like this you should almost always just go out and hit the bid as a momentum lot and trim and trail. However, there comes a point when it becomes super extended, and these bounces are sizeable.

One thing you have to bear in mind is that there is a little halt risk.

Once the stock has plummeted a decent way; how far depends on quite a few factors, but as a guide a minimum 3ATR (say down 20% or more), and enormous volume starting to come in can be a reasonable guide.

(1) Look for longer term support as a spot to fade it into. First time it tests it can easily wick through, so get a very decent starter position only slightly over the level. Because it's a starter you can use a wider stoploss to ensure that you aren't getting wicked out.

(2) Once you're in some starter position offer out immediately for some of the position. Who actually knows if it's bottomed yet, you just want to cover risk ASAP! Stoploss now trailed to the low that was set. Can look to add against this with confirmation.

(3) For target it can be reasonable to expect vwap or slightly over (depending on how much vwap has chased it down). Just as a note, VWAP should be chasing it down because of the capitulation you are buying into.

Bigger Picture: This is serious news, so the market doesn't play a huge part in the play. However, I suspect that in a cyclical bear market this news would cause a bigger depression in price, and maybe invalidate the play.

Intraday Fundamentals: ATR=$3.59, Market Cap=$1.37b, ADV=690k, Rvol=23.6x, FS=26%.
LL reported earnings before the market open where they missed on all counts. Midday they had a conference call where they announced that the BOJ was pressing for criminal charges. Additionally they announced that there would be a 60 minutes expose on them (wth?).
The 60 minutes expose brings in a different element than the usual SEC investigations in my mind. The reason being is that traders are loading up short prior to the expose, and then as it airs they will cover those to sheep shorting following the 60 minutes expose perhaps? So it adds a new dimension for a possible second leg lower. But this is a trade idea for the future not now.

Technical Analysis:
The level to watch is very clear on the H4. Have to zoom out further to get next level, which will no doubt be in play after the expose. I actually posted a twitter status at the time: https://twitter.com/lentjes12/status/570618020034248704

Trade Management: Start into a reasonable starter size into the $54 level. Offer out immediately for a decent chunk, you don't know it's the bottom after all! Stoploss quite wide at this point, say 1/3 ATR (good RR so that's okay). Once it bounces off the level trail stoploss to the low.
Here before you add to position you want confirmation that it's holding the level, say 5 minutes above, then look for add.
In this case, it went through, hard mechanical stop would be out at $53.50ish, and then when it begins to hold $54 again get back in, and add size on the grind. Once it trends and bottomed is confirmed that's when you can get a little bigger.
In this case it started to perk up midday coming into 2pm, so stoploss on remainder could be trailed hard, with a few adds.
In this case that breakdown represented a short which I didn't take.

Trading Review: 02-25-2015

Intraday Trading: +809 for the day. Great day overall, couldn't have had a better first day back trading on my real account. Great discipline, and objectivity. For the most part great size of winners compared to losers.
Referring back to my goals:
(1) Controlling risk. For the most part this was exceptional! There was a slipup on fading LL into support where I lost about $200 more than I should have by not having a hard stoploss in. I have withdrawn the profits from today to focus on repeating a day like today again.
(2) Focus on getting correct patient entries. This was also exception and helped me control risk nicely. The biggest temptation moment for lack of patience would have been LL, but I waited nicely for it.
(3) Curbing the level of over-trading. This was also excellent, when I felt I was pushing myself to the limits of my attention to detail for each trade I eased back and didn't rush in anymore.
(4) As per the over-trading comments I was psychologically fully committed to the trades I was in for most of the day so I didn't feel the need to search for better setups elsewhere.

CHGG: Was looking for a wash and weak open for red to green move. Midday you can see volume started to come in after a break of the triangle so I got long and added to decent size because I felt risk could be controlled well. By about 2pm I decided that it should have done something by now, and shouldn't have stayed red for so long so I got out of the trade.
Good trading!

PTCT: This was probably the worst trade of the day (besides the execution slipup on LL). Basically shorted the pop midday because it seemed to be coming from the PCYC rumours, but the spread was enormous and it had only moved 1ATR. Covered some immediately when I realised and just before I was about to get out of the other bit it spiked with enormous spread, but I didn't panic and actually added, top ticking it at just under $75 (which I had the power to do because of the immediate cover initially), then just bid to get out ASAP. Scary trade. Positive is I realised when I was out of my depth and gtfo.

LOW: I didn't trade this on the open. However, I noticed it regained vwap and joined the grind. I was a little late to the party though. Had I been earlier this would have been an exception trade. Cut for breakeven, after failing to notice the double top, which probably would have been a nice entry for a fade back, given that it occurred at the hod, and would represent failing to hold green. I guess the thing is here, anticipate the right of the chart by looking at the left. This should have been +$90ish by exiting at the double top, and possibly shorting there (or maybe not, but certainly selling position).

LL: Stock of the day for volatility. $54 was longer term support so got long into that and managed to sell a 1/4 on pop. I will do a playbook review on buying this panic I think because it is a potentially enormously profitable trade, I just slopped it a bit (was close to perfect though). Basically I should have been bidding for size below $54 because it was likely to whip through, secondly once the relative low was in and I was trying to hold need to trailing stoploss tightly to low. Lucky I got back in and caught the 4 point bounce.
I broke my controlling risk rules a little bit here, but I'm okay with that. I was probably at risk of being down about $400 on the stock (rather than my max of $300).
Midday hold and triangle breakout I relonged with size with tight stoploss and was stopped, but that's okay.
Didn't get the short into the close, but closing at the lows will make it a nice continuation play tomorrow. Possibly even a wash, reclaim vwap for quite a bit move up.

FSLR: Shorted small against prior days high on the open. Only got small, so didn't get covers into wash, retested and I got a little add, but I noticed it held higher, so I covered full position. On new highs I chased starter size looking to add lower, but didn't get execution. Pretty good trading over. Good position sizing and patient.
Probably should have set alerts given the morning action confirmed possible trend, there was a very basic pullback trade.

EYES: I got starter size on the open against a level from yesterday and sold into $12 and never got a chance to add. Would have been a killer trade if I had managed to hold the starter size to $14 lol... Good thing I had my back account long, which I sold at $13.89. I had been aiming to hold it until the third day, but couldn't help it - probably a good decision given that it was already a home run.

CYBR: Should have considered the short after this rollover, but difficult to borrow so not too worried. Basically just noticed it was grinding midday and noticed a spot to put on a lot of size for very little risk. Had it made new highs I would look like a genius, so I'm reasonably happy with the trade. Perhaps should have gone a little smaller - can always add.

BIOC: Biggest gainer for the day. Very basic play. Gapped up and a piece of crap like this you know people are heavily shorting it, so when it was still holding by 10am you HAVE to look to get long. So I started bidding, snagged a start, added on new highs with trailed stoploss and sold into $4.80s. Great trade!
Midday (11:30am) this pulled into vwap and there was huge negativity about the stock, but I figured with a low risk long here after it looked to have wicked through would be good RR for a move back to (close to) the highs. Worked perfectly, but I was a little large given it was a B setup.

4 Trading Goals as at 02-24-2015

Instead of doing the playbook review today I decided to do something a little different but what I feel is more important for me to focus on for my trading at the moment. I have already posted in my reviews about my need controlling risk, and getting good quality patient entries. However, there are a few things that need to be added to the list, so I will post about them and what specifically I will do to achieve them.

List of goals (in order of importance):

1. Control risk. 
1. High probability grinding type setups. Do not go for the home run type trade.
2. Keep position sizes "relatively" constant. Risk $50-$150 to make $150-$500.
3. Rinse and repeat. Similar to poker goal is to grind and grind. Serious opportunities present themselves with time. I have been playing a bit of poker semi-casually recently which helps my mindset on this.
4. No losses on any individual share to exceed $300.
5. Use starter positions for every trade idea.
6. Withdrawing every $500, while expensive in withdrawal fees will limit the size of drawdowns and help psychologically keep my sizes under control. Similar to in cricket how to make a half century or a century just focus on where the next 5 runs are coming from.
2. Focus on correct patient entries.
1. Get the good entries when everyone either really wants it or really doesn't want it.
2. Get the good entry by anticipating. E.G. How much momo is left?Trend? Prior levels? Where has it come from? Has the well been visited before?
3. Get the good entry by determining max pain point and that's the spot for extremely good entry. E.G. Line in the sand wash, enter, reclaim.
4. Patience!
5. Remember the feeling when a trade goes straight in your favour from getting a good entry.
6. For swing trades, it doesn't matter if you didn't get in yesterday because most of the time there will be a retracement the next day, providing an entry (possibly even higher probability.
7. The 9:30-10:00 opening madness most of the time can't prove your thesis wrong (there are exceptions of course), so you can get seriously good entries in this time zone.
3. Curb the level of overtrading.
1. Sometimes this can be solved by getting correct entry by following the above process. With the correct entry I can avoid some stopouts, and the resulting emotions that cause a fomo entry back in. This way a stopout will usually prove the thesis wrong.
2. Avoid changing directional bias too easily. There's being flexible in thought processes and reversing after blowoff tops etc, and then there's being hyper sensitive to movements.
3. In general I believe using limit orders rather than taking liquidity will help with this. When I'm trading well and not all over the place I tend to be taking liquidity. This is obviously a generalisation.
4. My overtrading/impulsive/boredom trades all tend to be longs. I'm not sure what solution to offer here, but just keep it in mind.
5. There is no harm in revisiting a trade idea in 2-15 minutes later before getting back in. There is in fact a high probability that it could offer a higher probability setup. So get it off the screen briefly to refresh mind.
4. Better scanning for stocks throughout the day. I need to be regularly checking and setting alerts for (a) top gainers, (b) top losers, (c) SMB radar stocks, (d) watchlist and prior watchlists. The first three are all slightly related, however this is completely different. Overall I am just giving up far too many opportunities just by not having scanned through the stock recently.
1. Set up a regular alarm (for times to be determined with more experience) as a reminder.
2. Set alerts for interesting stocks at particular levels, e.g. vwap, hod, lod, yesterdays low etc etc, major daily level.

These 4 things represent the main things I am unhappy with in my trading at the moment. Obviously there will always be things to work on, and this list is by no means exclusive, nor will I ever be able to truly tick all these things off. 

One thing I have to be careful of is that focusing on more than one goal at once can cause issues. However, I will try because the first three are so similar. If not I will have to revisit.

Trading Review: 02-24-2015

Was on demo again today, and didn't really feel the difference between real account and demo. I had actually doubted it would be a good idea for me to go on demo (for obvious psych reasons, that newbies find demo different to real), however it seems that I've been trading long enough to find them similar. So I now have boostered confidence in my discipline and can build on the momentum I've developed. So all in all a great exercise.

On real account today was +378 on swing trades, and +$475 on intraday trades. That oil say -pnl because of some muckup between the time it reset and the time the trade was taken. It was an intraday trade and the realised PnL is how much I made on it.

CRIS: Covered my CRIS position which I had size in because I didn't like the way it was holding and then it faded into the close and they announced after-hours that they were doing an offering, so that's a shame... But I want a clean slate when I go back to full time on the real account, and the position size was a little large for my new grinding low risk attitude.

PSTR: This damn thing is so illiquid I was actually bidding to close it most of the day, but oh well unlikely to move enough to annoy me on my fresh start tomorrow.

CL: Simply bought the breakdown to support level once support was confirmed. Level was $48.80 and once it washed and then confirmed it was good to go! Great trade!
It went about 2R further than profit target but I'm trying to grind and get consistency, so that's fine.

Demo Account for Active Intraday Trading: +$459. Great day. Disciplined and small losses; additionally I was unlucky with some entries on things like MU which would have contributed another +300ish. Only mistake was chasing EYES too early because I was too biased. Could have had a much much larger position on this (with lower risk) if I had played it correctly. Similar with NDRM. There was a tonne of opportunity out there today, and I missed a lot of it, so I have added to the list of things I would like to correct about my trading "better scanning for stocks throughout the day".

CYBR: This was my number one idea coming into today. Was looking for a bounce, ideally with a wash first, then a grind up reclaim vwap, which would have allowed me to pyramid into position. Unfortunately it just went straight up. However, I did a great job of adjusting, bidding for some with a stop below the low and getting good R returns. This didn't allow me to build decent size in it though.

NDRM: $12.75ish was the level to break.So when the first push failed I was nearly stopped out on my chasing entry. Was plenty of time for this one, no rush with entry. This is a sign of lack of patience, overtrading, discipline so need to get rid of this habit of chasing. In the end got a reasonable R multiple for it.

EYES: Chased entry for 500 shares (quite large but I really liked the setup), staying within the triangle it pulled back 10c (where my entry should have been saving me $50!) and then was over/under the line in the sand. Basically I was impatient with entry. There was plenty of time to get in the trade, so I should have been 200 chase, 200 add lower, 200 add on trendline break. Take a little profit into high, add back, add on breakout, and this would have been  a massive play. I was playing this in a back account for a swing which probably changed my priorities a little bit, but that's the general jist of how it should have been played.
This sort of reminds me of the philosophy I have developed about how to get the best entry you need to buy when it's fiddling with your line in the sand making you nervous.
I had an initial trade on EYES in the opening madness, which was stopped out (right before I could manage it), and resulted in a loss over $100. Funny how irrelevant that seems when you have good R multiples.

HD: This was a silly trade attempting to join the trend near the bottom despite moving beyond it's ATR. I should have kept it on radar though for the grind back above vwap.

MU: This thing reminds me of CTB yesterday. I went long looking for the over vwap push with a tight stop. CTB yesterday the thesis worked out but the tight stop punished me by a retest of the lows. This MU just wicked me out then regained. I tried to revisit but it missed my big. I was bidding quite large.

MNST: Got some really nice entries on this on a wick down. I should have managed straight away. I definitely could have traded it better, the daily is so bullish so it's a little ridiculous to be stopped at the afternoon low, rather than rinsing and repeating, allowing price to be relatively confined by ATR.

Trading Review: 02-23-2015

Today as per my weekly review I was on demo account for intraday trading. Was -$461 for the day on demo. Only traded for the morning, but gave it good focus and it didn't really feel any different to trading on real account. Overall I controlled risk well (main goal this week), but probably overtraded to a certain extent. The overtrading could have been curbed by two things: (a) Realising when I was wrong and required more confirmation; and (b) getting better initial/starter entries so that stoploss can be lower. Another thing I am happy with is that the afternoon trading would have been very profitable based on the thesis's I was trading, likely overall a positive day.

I think I need to bear in mind for the future that I don't trade as well on the open and keep sizes a little smaller on the open.

 Swing (real account) was +$238 for the day with just the short PSTR and short CRIS position.

BIOC: Bought the morning triangle breakout, and tried to add on confirmation with trailed stoploss but missed entry (the additional shares here would have added another $250 profit). Set half target at just under $2.50 and this was around when I left. Had I stayed trading I probably would have nailed the add on the midday triangle (which was actually when my profit target was hit lol), and I probably would have got some sales into $2.40 the first time, allowing decent size for the second ramp into $2.70-$2.80ish. Sales would have been taken into the parabolic, rather than holding until the end of the day. There is a chance I may have flipped short against the high on the retest, but I'm not 100% sure. Overall I anticipate I would have made an additional $250 (if not more) on this stock had I stayed throughout the day.

GRBK: I have no idea what this stock is, just something that was left on my demo account from last time I used it.

RIGL: Looks obvious in hindsight. Basically I shorted on the open with a tight stop against the premarket high and was stopped. This would have been a great trade had I not been stopped out. All other problems aside, I definitely under-perform on the open and this among the others that I traded today are prime examples of why.

In this case one possibility was to revisit the trade once I knew I had been wicked out. One alternative is to have wider stops, but I'm not overly comfortable with that; so I think another possible solution is work out where I want to stoploss to go, enter very close to that level and then I can have stoploss quite a bit beyond the level to avoid wicks.

Also remember that it is very hard for the opening madness (9:30-10:00ish) to violate a thesis so keep that in mind with entries.

OCN: This chart looks really unusual looking at it at the end of the day. I had thought that being in an uptrend if it presented a good dip it would be prime to scoop it up, however the opening activity suggested that the news was already baked in. I tried to buy at $9.50 and $9.30 support. Then it actually turned into one of my favourite setups, which I had left for the day so didn't trade (exactly the setup I was looking for in CYBR but was too biased). Basically vwap comes quite close to current price and so there's a good chance that sellers have become exhausted, and it could easily get above vwap. Vwap was at $9.00 when the conference call occurred and you can see it basically never looked back. Not sure if I would have gotten it due to the speed, but still nice action.

CLDX: This thing was an absolute pain in the ass. After the initial opening drive I was looking for spots to get long, I don't recall exactly where I tried, but I tried it twice on washes. And it was the one I missed which was in the middle of my attempts that was profitable (by about 4-5R), so a tad annoying but nice to know I had the right idea. Tricky stock, again this presented some opportunities post 10am.

CYBR: This was the only stock where I really had the wrong idea. I had been wanting to get long far out of the money calls after the gap up from earnings, but I decided to give it a chance to consolidate first, naturally it didn't do this, so I think naturally I want it to go higher and do a GPRO instead of looking at it clear. It is after-all the first down day after a big run, so it makes a lot of sense that it wouldn't stop. Additionally looking at the chart in hindsight, the behaviour around vwap is quite bearish; (a) vwap was never really close to the price, (b) it failed to rally and get above every possible point on the way down. This is an example of where I probably would have lost a lot of money without the focus on controlling risk because I would have been too large too early.

Hindsight given the above factors it might have been reasonable to join the trend at a low risk spot.

CTB: I had the exact right idea here. And I probably would have nailed it given some more time (I logged off about 10:15am), so I was trying to by on that brief hold of $34.50. Given more time I would have picked some up $34.30, sold into vwap, rinsed and repeat, and then got the nice pop over vwap, probably reloaded in the afternoon near vwap.

Weekly Review: 02-22-2015

Was down a lot this week. I didn't post on Thursday or Friday because I hit my max pain early Thursday and decided to take Friday off (still obviously had those swing positions etc) to clear my head and get in the right mindset. Derricks recent blog post is more or less identical to how I'm feeling right now: http://derricktrades.blogspot.co.nz/2015/02/the-setback-then-comeback.html

Was -$5869 on intraday trading, -$458 on swing trading, -$671 on SPI trading, and +$247 on FX.

To sum up how my weekly goals went. Focusing on entries has now become a secondary goal, I have improved on getting the right entries to an acceptable level, still nowhere near the level I would like to be, but sufficient for now, and will revisit it as a primary goal some point in the near future.

Some serious changes are required going forward, and like Derrick says, some soul searching. For me, the reality is that I need to focus on managing my risk and the size of my drawdowns (getting them to expected levels).

Honing in on specifics:
(1) I never have a problem cutting losses with reasonable position sizes, however recently I have been going for the big position size far far too much to hit the big one, and struggling with managing the losses on the large position size. So keep position sizes reasonable.
(2) I haven't been scaling into position, been starting in with full size. Almost always there have been higher confidence spaces to add later (say 10min-2 hours later, not 1 minute later).
(3) I have been focussing on nailing the big trade, so need to get back to the high probability grind trades. Risk $50-$100 to make $150-$500, rinse and repeat. Back to the grind.

I am going to trade on a demo for a day or two (or maybe more) for the first time in a long time just to prove to myself that I can control my risk. I am also going to pull back and only trade US stocks this week, just to hone in and focus.

So goals for this week:
(1) No individual losses exceeding $150, or no losses on any one share exceeding $300.
(2) Use starter positions for every idea.

Trading Review: 02-17-2015

(Ignore the SPI in the above that's for the next day).

Intraday Trades: -$1588. Got stuck in the SGNL halt long... Very nasty. Then after being down decently on oil I decided to call it quits for the day. Was plenty of opportunity out there though.

SGNL: GENE was dominating premarket so I decided to get long SGNL in sympathy, was working for a little bit and GENE continued to go up... But then SGNL was halted and announced a share offering for $2.80 (was long at roughly $4.50ish)... So very nasty. But to a certain extent completely out of my control.
Focusing on the process for the trade: I was a little impatient with my entry, should have got it at least 10c or so.
As for after the halt, I should have been offering it out staggeredly trying to get the best prices as it traded at $3.70 a couple of times, and I would have got an exit about 50c better (=$500).
I had given up for the day, but I really would have loved to get really large on that first test of $2.80, risk 5c or so for 20c. Could have gone 5k shares+,plenty of liquidity.

Oil: This was basically a nightmare and an example of how fading can go wrong, especially with commodities which tend to have a little more momentum. Accordingly I am going to refine my fade strategy, because clearly it doesn't work quite as well commodities as it does for forex. Hopefully the improvement will help with the forex fading etc. This refinement and full explanation will be posted on blog.
I had more or less given it up on fading the oil, but then I was flicking through time-frames and noticed that even the hourly chart was super super extended, so I decided to give it one more go, this time with options because of the superior RR they represent, so I picked up a tonne of $52 calls at 17c (by the end of the day these were trading at $1.60 (holy shit!), and just traded 1 futures contract. I noticed that oil had started the hold higher, but I got out of my options, which put me at around -1500 for all the oil trades, and decided to trail the stoploss tight on the futures contract and just leave it on. So it ended up rallying about $2.50, which is ridiculous... And so I ended up breakeven on the oil trading all up.
I guess the lesson here is that a combination of overextension, e.g. hourly, and 15 minute will lead to a better reversal (also I like the daily bullish), but thought it would have had one more down day.
And of course the other lesson is the work I will do on refining my strategy.
I think one other possibly takeaway is that if you're going to leave anything sitting there it is probably better off being some options. The RR is so much better (although my tight stop was about 10c).

PSTR: Again it's just mucking around, the longer it holds here the less prepared I will be to hold it on rallies/add short into rallies.

Trading Review: SPI 02-16-2015

SPI Trading: +$261 for the day. I hadn't actually intended to trade on the day, and I was busy for the morning, however when I logged on mid to late day I noticed that after a strong opening trend a sharp reversal had occurred and it was beginning to establish above vwap.
The daily bias is still bullish despite looking like it's about to rollover so I began to bid for some contracts as it was grinding higher. In the end my gain was minimised, as I decided it wasn't moving quick enough for me, but was profitable due to the good entry. Great discipline! That's what I need to grind back after that nasty loss on the SPI prior.

Daily Chart:

Intraday Chart: