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Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Wednesday's charts

It was a strange day for me. I will not say it was a bad day, as any day that I make money is a good day. But, I only took a few trades and could not get into the proper mindset. Part of the problem was a lack of set-ups, but I am also mentally exhausted from my three nights of television (Sopranos, 24, The Shield season finale)!!!

Here are two charts with abbreviated analysis:

ANGO; 15-minute chart - a "bread and butter buy" set-up, with a textbook hammer forming on the retracement zone. I closed the position when it hit the morning high.




WLK; 30-minute chart - a gap down with a wide range first bar that closed below the 50% mark (of the first bar's range) leaving a long upper tail/wick. The second bar was a narrow-range, inside bar that closed weak. The target was the Fibonacci extension of the previous day's high to the OR low - but, price reversed .05 short of that target, and I closed the position on a break of the tenth bar high.



note - this stock was lower volume than I usually like to trade, and I was only filled on 1/2 the position I tried to take.


Housekeeping:

I will be out the rest of the day taking care of some business issues. And, I plan to be refreshed for a great day of trading Thursday! Feel free to comment on any good trades you may have had today. Also, I am behind on emails so if you are expecting a reply it may take a day or so.

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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Saw WLK, but did not take it. Completely missed ANGO. Your off day is better than my best day. Thanks for the great blog.
Robert

Anonymous said...

I thought for sure I would see CEPH as one of your trades today. Just curious, not that I want to see it but do you ever have a losing day?
Glenn

Anonymous said...

NABI 15 min chart. Long off 4th candle, stop placed 2 cents under 3rd candle. Bread and butter setup retracement....I think....Trader X? I moved stop to 5 cents above break even after it broke HOD. I was stopped out on 24th candle, but still managed 1 times my risk, as price shot up after it hit my stop, and filled higher. I leave my stops very loose as I find I get picked off by retracements too often. I hold all my picks till end of day.

Shorted ELN off 2nd 15 min shooting star-like candle. Stopped out on 9th bar. Poor setup in hindsight.

Trader-X said...

Glenn - rarely do I have a losing day. Instead, I have days where I breakeven or make just a little money. I have worked hard over the years to limit my losses, and as I have mentioned mulitple times I take fewer set-ups so I can better manage the trade once I am in...that is why I only try to take the best set-ups.

IP today is a good example of closing a trade with a profit - I took the classic "bread and butter sell" set-up off a break of the eleventh bar low. Price fell, but two bars later it was obvious it was bouncing off support at the high set by the first three bars. So, I covered for a very small gain instead of taking the chance of letting it turn into a loser.

Anonymous said...

That makes sense X. In the past, I have taken many positions at once and had a nice green P&L only to see it turn red by days end because I did not have the ability to monitor the stocks and let the positions get away from me. And then if you have one bad loser, it wipes out all the winners.