Intraday Trading: -$808. So there were some positives and negatives about today's trading. The negative is obvious, so start with positives. (1) There was some excellent management of positions. DYAX I actually made money shorting the opening rally twice... Which is incredible, and is the result of active management to cover risk, and great patience for the good levels. (2) Using hard stops with an allowance for possible flush. This kept emotions at bay, and was a lot less taxing than using mental stops.
The obvious negative is letting the ADXS loss exceed $300 (more exact details in ADXS writeup). But psychologically what happened was I got fomo after losing money on the first two trades, and then didn't trade it well after that. It is important to note that there were actually trades to be had on the short side after I had already lost approximately $300, but that I wasn't readily available to take them in a disciplined manner. Being involved with ADXS also caused me to miss the DYAX selloff that occurred (which would have been a nicely positive trade).
Also interesting is that today I didn't feel like the enormous profit from shorting PSTR in back account affected how I traded intraday. Usually I feel that a loss like ADXS would be a result of overconfidence from a big gain, but today this wasn't the case.
For tomorrow:
(1) Limit losses on individual stocks to approximately $300.
(2) Try and attain a higher level of conviction on ideas/trades. Didn't quite have the accuracy that I would like today.
ADXS: Shorted into the all-time high and multiple tested resistance from the past 5 days of $16.50. At this point it had already rallied approximately 1ATR so I am reasonably happy with trade. Stopped above. One thing I note about this trade is that although it was strong resistance it didn't quite tick all the boxes. There are two boxes which were against the short. (1) The price action going into the level was quite consistent and grindy, rather than popping into the level, (2) It consolidated below the level prior to breaking it. These two things should have resulted in me doing smaller size.
Next I shorted into $17, again those two things against it, plus a new all-time high. Had risk too wide on this one as well. Now at this point I was down around $350-$450 (can't remember exactly), but it was time to call it quits on trading the stock... But I didn't.
From there, there was actually short opportunities, which I would have nailed with patience, but I didn't have patience because it had twisted me emotionally.
Going forward, it looks like it wants the $20 magnet, so will be very careful with shorting.
AAPL: Nice callout from Peter coming into the lows. Only did it small and so I sold all into 125.50, but hindsight I should have got bigger at $125.01 when the risk was only 10-15c, and that would have allowed me to ride half to $126.
NVGN: Really nice daily chart, and perking up but just couldn't get going. I got a little big, and as a result I should have aggressively sold into spikes, but I did sell a little bit and slowly pieced out the position on the offer rather than smacking the bid. Despite the too big position size it was reasonably good trading.
CBMG: I can't quite decide if I traded this well/with enough size or not. It's a great setup, but it had a nasty spread and was quite hard to control risk. Also it wasn't entirely clear, like other similar setups are. Had 200 shares but maybe could have had 300 shares?
Got down to 50 shares at $25, and as a result missed a $3 rally with any significant size. Really good patience for the sale of 50 shares though! I think if I had 300 shares I could have traded it better, by being down to 1/3 at $25 instead of 1/4.
EYES: I really lost a bit too much money trading this. It wasn't an amazingly high conviction setup.
Was basically looking to get long because it looked like the gap up was holding. If I was right there would have probably been spots to add, thus no need to be aggressive with size. Plus when the first trade didn't work it was probably a bad sign.
All that being said, buying into the opening spike low around $14.80, would have yielded a positive trade... But the fact that it retested the low negated my bullish bias (because it shouldn't have been able to be that weak)... Interesting food for thought.
LULU: Shorted into $69 on the open, stopped above. Thought about revisiting it at $70 but decided against it because all it had going for it was the round number significance. Now that's fine and good patience/selection. Key here is to revisit the idea because it offered a reversal trade for below vwap down to $68, which coincidentally would have been a nice long spot (against the opening print).
The long at $68 would have been a similar play to that AAPL long, although the AAPL long is a slightly better play imo. Needed to do a better job of setting alerts and revisiting ideas.
DYAX: $29 was yesterdays high, so shorted into that and managed some quickly! Great stuff and really good trading. Managed to rinse and repeat it as well, and then stopped above. Tried again into $30 and managed it into $29.50, then re-added into $30, and stopped above. Love this trading because my idea didn't work, but I still made money!!!!!!! Good selection of levels and patience.
Then missed the midday rollover because I was busy with ADXS but that would have been a reasonably positive trade (around +$200). I managed to get it with 100 shares and got about +30.
Going forward this will be an amazing short eventually, kinda like CLDX or ESPR but just have to be careful shorting. Make sure the upward momentum has faded!
Swing Trades: -$191.
LL: Still just grinding up. Squeeze thesis still in place.
AXN: Interesting daily. Is grinding up slightly so need to be on the watch for stopping out... But volume is still completely dead - bit of a divergence in indicators.
Back Account: +$2590.
Massive massive day shorting PSTR obviously. Continued to "push luck" in back account and it paid off. Obviously when you're trading well you need to push it as hard as you can, and there seems to be some logic to the fact that I have a higher conviction in any trade I take to back account (because of lack of borrows). It is particularly interesting because I struggle (to some extent) to distinguish between high conviction trades on my intraday account. Since I opened the account (just over a month ago) I have traded 17 stocks and been profitable on 1 of them... That's ridiculous! And the net losses have been quite small relatively.
Now the account is getting to a size where I'm not prepared to keep increasing size, but will keep doing the big size I am currently. Plenty of lessons to be learned from this...
Got some on the gap up and was offering closer to $5 for some more and got met (power of patience!). Scalped out of half at $4.50 to ensure I had the staying power for the remaining half. Then as each bounce failed I started adding ending up with 4x the position (2x original position from pop), aka 4000 shares total. Now I felt like I had ruined my average a little bit by adding too much size, but I had conviction. Then to cover position I was bidding around $4 but it missed my price by $0.01. Covered half under $4, and then half when it was holding at $3.90.
If I was to do it differently I would add more into the $5 pop. I think I was spot on about the ruining average comment.
Update for the intraday graph. Lower low, so need to be super discipline tomorrow and grind it up.
No comments:
Post a Comment