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Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Tuesday charts - 021709

A red day all around:

Dow, -3.79%
Nasdaq, -4.15%
S&P 500, -4.56%

Go figure that two of my best trades were on the long side. Both were variations of the "push through" setup.

AU gapped up and printed a wide-range first bar. The second and third bars narrowed in range and pulled back to the halfway point between the morning's high and the 50% retracement. The third bar formed a cross between a hammer and doji-type candle. All three bars closed green and above the halfway level (white dashed line).

I entered on a break of the third bar high and exited half the position at the FE. I held the other half and exited just before 1:00EST as it appeared price was rolling over.




SMG was a nice three bar pattern - it gapped down, and printed three strong bars, with the third closing just below the morning's high. I entered on a break of the third bar high, and exited half the position at the FE. I was holding the other half for the S2 Pivot Line (yellow line) - but price was stubborn and just missed that level. I exited the other half on a break of the ninth bar's low.



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10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi X,

Congrates on your trades. I have a different first bar of SMG on my Prophet chart. Mine looks like a spinning wheel. I thought IAG was another great setup on the 3rd bar. Also do you think BK (9th bar) is a variation of your Top out setup. All charts are on 10 mins time frame.

Thanks
DEM

sunyata said...

Hey X,

Thanks for sharing your trades. Gives me a better idea exactly what you are looking for. Also, I wonder if all these setups can be "reversed", i.e. do you look for a push-through setup to the downside as well or a perfect pullback to the 50% line as a short. As an example of the latter, please refer to a 10-min chart of AG today.

Thanks again!

fxTradr said...

Great post. Thanks so much. Are you trading much NASDAQ or do you generally stick to the NYSE?

Anonymous said...

i short USB -8 bar(15)
i sell 2 cent ander the or and have 4 cent stop it get as far as 50 cent(12R)
what you think about sell/buy support/resistanc of the or with a small stop???

TraderAm said...

Hello X,
Nice trade on AU. I had the same ideas on the price action although on my usual 15min timeframe.

I think I must be doing ok if I have the same trade as the master :-)

P.S> Thanks for recent updates on your stratgies etc...very useful info.

Michael said...

This is some info I think you may want to know about that I read on another site, please give it a look.

http://www.greencompany.com/EducationCenter/Greenblog011409.pdf

Trader-X said...

DEM - thanks. FYI, I trust my data over Prophet.

Both IAG and BK look like good setups. IAG wasn't even on my watchlist!

Sunyata - I don't reverse all of them because the probability falls when you go from long to short, short to long. I will try to elaborate in the future.

fx - actually, I prefer trading Nasdaq stocks...it just seems I have traded more NYSE lately.

Trader-X said...

niki-

Normally that is not a trade I take/look for...on the plus side, the 8th bar was pulling back to test the morning low as resisatnce.

TraderAM - thanks for the positive feedback. I am not worthy!!!

Unknown said...

Hi X

fantastic blog as always!! thanks for all your time and effort in providing your insight and helping us improve our trading - it really is much appreciated

Now that you are plotting fibs over the opening 30 minute morning range - Am I correct in assuming that most of the moves to the FE are smaller than your previous method of plotting fibs which were often to the Previous day's ORH\ORL? And do you now trade more often or increase your position size to compensate for the smaller move and to maintain the same level of finacial targets as before when the moves were potentially larger?

Also I wondered if your new method affected the risk \ reward ratio of your trades given the fact that the move to the FE as your target might be smaller.

Do you have a minimum risk \ reward in mind before you will enter a trade? I know a lot of traders whose success\lose ratio is around 50% aim for higher risk\reward level because of this. But because of your higher success rate (70-80%), I just wondered of this allowed you to accept lower risk\reward in your trades and at what point you wouldn't enter a trade.

thanks again for all your advice
Mark

Trader-X said...

armo-

The reason for the switch is because I am looking to limit my trading (most days) to the first few hours.

I find that I focus even more, and because of that I pick good setups that yield nice returns. You are correct that the FE is closer, but in general my profits have remained steady through picking setups with the most potential and also holding portions of my position for a move beyond the FE in some cases.

I don't think I am taking that many more setups, but it has increased...probably 10-20%.