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.