Intraday Trades: -$1119. Real headache of a day for intraday trading because I lacked buying power because I was carrying so much ADES short. Watched a lot of my planned out trades work out without me. That being said, quite happy to do this a little bit because it teaches me to sit on my hands. In the end I trimmed the ADES short to ensure I didn't have any buying power issues tomorrow.
FSLR: Straight momentum play after-hours. After hours has a slight tendency to be momentum oriented, so was quite happy to join the trend with 30c risk. Stopped out on first attempted, and second attempt worked out well hitting first target near the top, but gave back probably a little too much on the remaining lot. Stopped the remaining lot at $50, in reality I should have stopped it once the trend snapped at $50.50 - it was only 50 shares mind you.
TWTR: This is actually carried at roughly 85c. This was rolling over into the close, getting below the midday resistance, and below vwap. Expressed this idea via options, which improves the RR, and reduced the buying power requirement. At one point I was up roughly 1.5x my risk and it narrowly avoided my first target so reasonably happy overall. Hindsight, this would have been a better setup if the market was weak.
I made a mistake when trying to close the position, after realising it wasn't doing anything I tried to get out on the offer, and ended up carrying it overnight (so I will experience gap risk and theta decay). This was poor execution and a good lesson not to get too obsessed over the bid/ask spread on options. I mean I usually only trade liquid options so that I don't have to worry too much.
ZIOP: This was just a small long against the secondary level. Didn't hold, so was out. Good trade. Will revisit this in a couple of days when it is clearer if the secondary was "successful" or not. For now, dips below the secondary are very clearly being bought up.
CL: This thing was ridiculously frustrating!! Almost by definition when trading futures you have to trade 2 contracts so that you can take profit to cover risk and then go for the bigger target on the other one. I usually do this, but with the buying power issues I was having I only traded 1, and went for the far out target... Hindsight this was obviously stupid, and with one contract I should have been going for the high probability target.
So the general strategy for this was buy washouts, risk 10c, and got for decent retracement of the overextension, especially when it was around the uptrend on the hourly. In this case first target would usually be around 20-30c, and second target 40c-$1 (depending on situation). So I made 8 trades in total, and not a single one was a winner (although was unlucky with the fakeout at the close which rallied $1 and would have put me neutral on oil for the day). So I went through and worked out how it would have gone if I traded it with 2 contracts, and a 2R target on the second target (this means hitting the 2R first target and then stopping out would yield +0.5R, and a normal stopout would yield -1R). This strategy would have yield a $0 result, compared to -8R. Good lesson here about the requirements of managing trades efficiently. Overall, even on a good day where you do get the big 10R return or whatever, as a sum total it smooths returns significantly. This also reduces the luck component of the trading returns because of random things like fakeouts etc (that happened to me :P).
Overall, with CL I'm actually quite happy because I didn't let it get to me too much, and I usually don't have a problem with trade management.
Swing Trades: +$3356 for the day.
VPOR: So this was obviously pretty nutty. As I posted yesterday, with that sort of volume and the diluting Market Maker nowhere to be seen, there's only one way for it go. Now it's roughly in my target zone to take off a significant amount (was thinking 0.0019), however when it became apparent it wasn't going to reach this by the end of day I took 1/5 off, purely as a matter of principle.
The reason for only taking 1/5 off is because it's the first big up day on good volume, so I will look to take another 2/5s off tomorrow around these prices.
Again, I will be out of entire position if diluting mm BMAK/VFIN (VFIN not so much) comes back. And will scale out of position into the upmove, while being careful to keep a little bit for a decent sized move.
AAPL Far Out of Money Call Options: I initiated this trade today, so it would usually go under intraday trades. However I initiated it with the intention of holding for a swing.
Basic setup is that it has consoldiated against the all-time high for a while, and then had an opening drive b/o today, which then held. This is a very nice setup and should have at least 2 days of continuation.
Reason for using far out of the money options to express my view (I used the $124 weeklies):
(1) - It is highly likely to continue for 2 or 3 days if the breakout proves true. With an ATR of just over $2 this easily puts it in the range of $125.
(2) - The price of options generates appropriate risk-reward. The payoff of the options is vastly skewed towards the $124-$126 price range, because of gamma. In this price range (depending on the day), the options will be worth anywhere from $0.50-$2.50. This is enormous RR, and reasonably high probability given the daily setup in my mind.
I initiated the options trade once AAPL had held the gap up for sufficiently long.
ADES: Now this trade actually worked out. But as mentioned earlier, I really was a little large (I wasn't overly uncomfortable, it was just tying up too much buying power).
This trade never made me sweat throughout the entire day - very weak. This is a sign of continued weakness, however, I just couldn't continue to swing the same size.
I notice ADES has now become hard to borrow which is annoying.
MDBX: This was a pain. Actually got a slight gap up, but couldn't get execution on the sale. Then, to add insult to injury had to chase it lower for sale, but then tried to buy the wash into $1.75 and couldn't get execution.
Now to a certain extent it was my fault not getting the execution, I was a little slow on the tape read as I had anticipated $1.60s rather than $1.75. Either way, that's just a scalp, not going to make or break your day (although a similar scenario is might as you get a 50%+ bounce off lows.
Now because of the missed intraday trades today I will go through some, and how I should/would have traded them.
YELP: Now coming into the open I had planned to start into a washout, then as it begins to hold a little higher add, then as it holds above vwap add again. Now that all changed when the news came out about them acquiring the eat24. With the gap up, the plan changed from short an enormous opening drive into $45, or look for it to consolidate and hold the gap, then get in close to vwap for a move to $45ish. The perfect spot occurred for this around 10:30 with a tight consolidation near the highs and just above vwap. Easy trade missed.
There were quite a few, but one worthy of mention is ANFI:
This had a gap down below yesterdays lows, based on a research report. Now it is possible to start into the gap down long. However, the really good trade is when it establishes above vwap and has a tight consolidation at the highs. Very good risk-reward and high probability trade.
There was also an FX trade I missed on USDCAD related to the late day oil move. Annoying this trade worked compared to the oil trade. So I guess this is a very good lesson about making sure always have free buying power.
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