Trading Review: 03-10-2015

Intraday Trading: -$988. Was up a tonne on LL at one point (about $700 between the options and the stock), which is obviously annoying to give that back through poor management (elaborated on below). However, the big thing again today is letting the ACAD exceed $300... I have come to a deal with a friend where he monitors my results and gives me shit if I have a stock where my loss exceeds $300, plus I have to give him a token $5 (which will really grind my gears), so hopefully this is the path to rectifying this behaviour. Annoying thing is, I knew it at the time, but I still let the loss ride out a little further. Reality is that I should have closed the position, taken a walk, and come back. Having done this two days in a row, I have dug deeper into the behaviour and potential causes in a separate post, rather than waiting until the end of the week to do a thorough analysis.

LL: Start with reviewing LL, because I believe that giving back all the PnL I had on this is what partially triggered the bad trading on ACAD. Unfortunately LL gapped up and ran which made it a little harder oversold bounce play. But I still managed to get reasonable size on it, for not too bad risk given the annoying gap and go. So I grabbed 5 $35 options for late march as well once it was confirmed to be holding vwap. Basically expecting a multi-day squeeze higher. Which is fine... It's the management that caused the issue.
So I had decent size after the opening drive on the hold around $30, but I was selling less than half into the spikes, which mean, when it retraced I had less to reload and repeat. Even when it got to $32 I had sold slightly less than half, which simply isn't good enough management. At the peak of $32 I was up roughly $700, and had only locked in about 2/5, excluding the options! Which I hadn't locked in any of. So I was about $300 realised at $31 when I loaded up even larger size on the midday break higher (which was a nice setup), but it just didn't work out. Stopped out as planned, but this bought me back from a peak of $700 profit to the $140-$194, so a net loss. This is why I have placed emphasis on managing my positions so aggressively recently!
Didn't consider the short on the break of $30.80 (which was line in sand and vwap), but it was a nice trade, and a pattern that's been playing out on LL quite a bit recently.

ACAD: So after reviewing LL moving onto ACAD. Basically went parabolic on rumours of a buyout. Now there's a few issues in fading buyout rumours on super strong volume and continued price action, such as potential halts etc. But... that aside, it is fine to trade it on lighter size. However, overall there was plenty wrong with my trade thesis' in this, ignoring size and loss that occurred. Now I actually nailed the first parabolic (was stopped out once, and got back in good spot, and locked in a nice net profit), was probably already trading a bit too much size at this point. But at this point these were pretty good trades. Now as it breaks to new highs on the SAME volume (rather than a fakeout), that's your warning signal. But again nothing wrong with trying it with smaller size if that's what you're thinking at the time.
Was stopped out, and then tried again. Now at this point after the two consecutive losers I was down approximately the $300. And that makes good sense to stop trading the stock there. Clearly I haven't got the right idea fading it (and taking a step back with the volume and a 3.5 ATR move without any signs of exhaustion I obviously didn't). But using the down $300 as a pause to take a rest would have worked nicely as a mindset reset button. I am fine with the behaviour up to this point.
However, I then tried the short again... slightly bigger size, and let the price got against me quite a bit (down about $900 at peak, this bought in the adrenalin mindset I identified in my breakdown blog post). Eventually I finally closed it for a few hundred dollars loss, bringing net down to about -$500, but I immediately reversed it to long... What a dumb idea. Again, too large size and let it go a few dollars against me. Which bought it to the total.

I won't go  through the rest today, because they were just pretty standard good grinding trades. Main focus is controlling losses!!!!

Swing Trades: -$449. BIOC says a profit, but running it from yesterdays screenshot price it is a loss of around $150ish. This basically all comes down to LEAF which I gave back a lot more profit than expected. Although I already knew it, something became incredibly clear to me while trading LEAF and BIOC today. Both spiked on the open and I added heavily into the spikes. If they were intraday trades you wouldn't let them spike against you like that at all, and you certainly wouldn't be averaging into the spikes. The point being, that swing trading is different to intraday trading. Intraday trading you need to focus on where the next leg, or intraday trend is. Swing trading you need to work around your position, taking some profit in places so that you have spare bullets left to add into spikes (in this sense swing trading is a little more contrarian), and it is exceptionally important to look after your averages. So for swing trading, work out a max size you want, then work around your position to ensure your average is good.
I also did this today with CRMD in my back account. For once, just because it illustrates the point nicely I will elaborate on a back account trade.
BIOC:

LEAF: Closed this at the end of the day, because the strength that held is a change of pattern. Great job of selling the crap out of the morning spike though. Covered 2/5s into the resulting downmove. Perhaps it should have been 3/5s.. hmmm...

BIOC: Now this is the point about the pain taken on swing trades. I had planned to cut the CRMD swing on a hold of new highs. I shorted the morning pop and got short at $8.74 (absolutely nailed it). Now I would usually manage into the resulting downmove, but cause it's a back account idea just holding full size $6.50s or lower. Now if you were intraday trading this you would most certainly be out on the shift to green and resulting squeeze. However, I still had bullets to fire to get my average up a bit. Looking for the sweet spot, a rejection around the high from yesterday and all-time high was perfect spot. With a stop on a hold above that level. Now average is $9.00ish and can cover that add into a downmove, thus swing average has been improved. Basically will be same plan for tomorrow. Again, this would be slightly different if it was a front account swing idea.