Intraday Trades: -$188. I actually lost roughly an extra $120 on oil which got wiped out somehow. Pretty disappointed with how I handled the day overall. Today was the real first test of character with a swing position, and I guess you would say that I failed certainly didn't get an A (but perhaps not an F either). More explanation in the ADXS review of swing trades. Point being that having the sizeable position (which could have gone either way) for the entire day restricted my buying power, and my attention (was watching ADXS constantly), and so I couldn't trade anything intraday. There wasn't a huge amount of opportunity, but there certainly was some good trades.
Accordingly I will need to put some work into predefining the exact conditions for when/how to stomach pain on those kind swing positions.
HLF: Was a simple short after the break of consolidation from yesterday afternoon. Short biased because it was fluff news (ackman being investigated for manipulating the stock) that caused the original upmove, but only took it for 100 shares. Should have been bigger, but again, focus was on ADXS. Good trade.
CL: There is effectively no excuse for being down on this. It basically played out exactly how I expected. I got long after the gap down when the downward momentum was gone (long around $44). Was stopped as it made a new low. This trade was a 2 lot.
Then got long into the prior 52 week low, but problem was this was only a 1 lot. So I didn't manage the position when I should have (and usually would), so on the resulting minor correction I closed the trade (where I would probably usually be looking to add). Luckily I got long again once it got above the vwap and managed to get a little back, but I missed about $300 on the difference between my getting faked out and the new entry
Coming into the US session I made a few trades, nothing of note though. Was trying to get short but it just didn't quite work out. Then then became long biased and was looking for the grind over vwap type of trade, but I was focused on ADXS and had no buying power.
Swing Trades: +$139.
AXN: This one went against me when I had the chance to manage it at breakeven yet again. However, it isn't easy to borrow so it's not 100% clear that I could re-establish. Although clearly from the price action it would probably be worth it. Thus far it's holding too well, so I will look to manage the position tomorrow so that I have more bullets if it goes higher.
CRMD: Established this later in the day. I think based on the fundamentals and price action this really is an A+ swing short, probably better than ADXS (although the current ADXS price perhaps makes the RR better). I wasn't looking to get a short on this because borrows were hard and I had a short position on in my back account but when it became available to short I decided it was worth it. Easily room on the downside for $6-$6.50.
ADXS: Now onto the one that matters for the day. I had 300 shares coming into the day and the stock gapped up on news of 1/2 phase data... So it gapped up from $12.50 to around $13.50. When reviewing the daily price action I'm reasonably happy with this, considering that my maximum position I planned to take overnight was 500 shares, and my maximum intraday position I planned to get was 1000 shares. The only change I would make coming into today is to take some profit into that fake breakdown on Friday.
So now onto what happened today. I was quite nervous given the tendency of the stock to really test the upper limits before peaking. With an ATR of $1 I considered that opening at $13.50, and an opening low of $13, the place to average up my swing short was around $14.50ish. So I missed the first pop to $14.20, which I'm okay with (best to be cautious), and then I got the second pop on the retest. So I got up to a position size of 1100 shares short, with a breakeven at $13.50. When it got down to $13.50 I covered (200 or 300?) shares and quickly reloaded them. This was a mistake. I should have covered half so that I had more bullets to average up with. The size was playing mind games with me. So now this will be a hard and fast rule of my swing trades of this nature (blog post coming on specifics). That is, when averaging to max size as the position goes against you cover half on the first retest of breakeven (obviously don't be too fussy about where breakeven is). It is very important to still have the bullets there for further rallies. Plus taking half off (i.e. bringing the size down to a nice manageable level clears the head) and reduces greed/fear.
So because I added back the 300 shares quickly I held the entire size of 1100 shares through the midday consolidation. There was a key point where it started breaking out when I should have cut it and revisited, and there was another key point at 12pm (price of $14.10) where I anticipated that it would have a high of day rejection (fakeout) and that would set up a nice afternoon fade. I was spot on with this intuition, but I didn't cover any at $14.10 so that I could reload at the high of day. This is extremely poor and basically cost me around $250. It is a case of knowing what I should do but just not having the discipline to do it. Now obviously this isn't very good, and was a result of the emotions from the size I was carrying. However, had I got the breakeven cover for half of the position it obviously wouldn't have happened.
Covered into the lows, and will short pops tomorrow. Bigger picture that $13.87 was the all time high, so a daily close below that will have stopped out all the breakout buyers, so am fully expecting it to come off now.
No comments:
Post a Comment