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Sunday, November 07, 2010

A few charts from Friday

I didn't have a lot of time for the blog last week, but here are a few charts from Friday.

The first chart had several entry opportunities as it tested the FE for support (note - a "beyond the FE entry"); I entered after a break of the short-term trendline when the high of the hammer-type candle was taken out. I closed the position after a dollar gain, but as you can see there was a lot more potential (a good exit would have been after price pulled back and closed below the 8EMA).

I entered DXCM (the second chart) on a break of the fourth bar's high, with my target being the retracement zone. I actually closed the position early when price touched the 8EMA five bars later.





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11 comments:

joshua said...

is there a "button" on the blog to follow/subscribe to the comments as well?

thanks

Times of Your Life said...

Thanks Trader X
both are excellent entries...

t4s said...

Hi X,

where was your initial stop on that second trade?

Thanks!

t4s

David said...

I actually traded FLR, but on a 5 minute chart. Great site, thanks for sharing!

Anonymous said...

Trader-X,

Sir, your blog is extraordinary, as is your process. I am enjoying it very much. I have only been day trading for six months (swing trading three years) and recently discovered your site. I'm just seeking clarification on a few of your statements and wondering if some things have changed with your trading evolution.

Regarding Real Tick, I'm not familiar with their software, but I'm wondering why you are working with four lists that you must then combine? Is it still the gaps of >1% for stocks under $20 (a long list and short list) and gaps of >2% for stocks over $20 (a long list and short list), which would total four gap scans? I've been to Real Tick's site, but I found no gap scan info.

Regarding Trade Ideas, why did you discontinue its use? I have never used them (I use Finviz), but I do see it referenced intermittently on various blogs now and again. Just curious if you found Trade Ideas to be redundant, hindering, information overload in lieu of seeking simplification, etc, with your faster charts and evolved style.

Lastly, I sometimes see your stops described as the opposite extreme of the "entry bar" and other times described as the opposite extreme of the "trigger bar". I could be confusing myself, but isn't the "entry bar" separate and subsequently adjacent to the "trigger bar"? I'm really wanting to understand where your stop is placed, or if you have changed your stop placement since your hiatus.

Sincere thanks for your time and your blog. It's truly a fine piece of work, post after post.

Sincerely,

Chips & Salsa

Tom C. said...

Anon, the stop is always the opposite extreme of the TRIGGER bar, unless otherwise noted. If entry bar was stated, that was a mistake. If you are going long on a break of the trigger bar's high, the stop will be the trigger bar's low. Opposite for a short.

Anonymous said...

Good weekend to ya, Trader-X.

Is there a way to day trade your system without having to account for the day's general market direction?

Individual equities seem GROSSLY correlated across the board and utterly tied to the intraday direction of the Nasdaq, S&P, Russell, etc.

I find very few exceptions to this correlation when I review my gap trades taken/passed on. I trade 15m charts.

I'm forced to figure out market sentiment daily, and sometimes the indices give headfakes (like yesterday's gap-down that formed a 30m bullish hammer and rallied all day).

I long for the days when a stock would run independently without so much influence from index and sector ETFs swaying the market so heavily.

I guess my question is this:

Do you factor the intraday direction of indices into your decision to go long or short for the day? And if not, how do you avoid the impact of the market's movements if you end up trading against its powerful intraday trend?

Sincere thanks

Trader-X said...

Tom C. is right regarding stops, sorry if I misstated anywhere.

Anon, I don't look at the overall market direction, I can't recall having done it in the past decade. I have talked about that throughout the blog, so you might try searching. Basically I feel my setups form in the context of what is happening in the market, and trying to determine the direction of the market for the day takes away from the analysis I need to do for the stocks I am trading. Also, I don't just go "long" or "short" for a trading session - I take the setups as they come. I usually trade long and short in the same day, and quite often I have great shorts during a day when the overall market rallies and vice versa.

Thanks for reading!

joshua said...

anon, i agree with you. when i reviewed my trades from the past year, the ones that more often worked were because the market was moving in the direction of the trade. the ones that failed, more often than not, happened when the stock was not moving in sync with the market.

and i am not only talking direction, but also timing. say the market was a long, and i longed my stock, but before a market pull back. again, the probabilities were that i would get stopped out.

x or tom c, any word on the subscribe to "all comments" button. i know you can subscribe to each individual post's comments, but that would mean having to add each post's comment section to my reader. on my blog, and many others, there is a button subscribe to "all comments". if you could add that, it would be great. there is so much gold in these comment sections it is a shame to miss any of it.

Trader-X said...

Joshua - I am not sure how to do that. I looked around the setup, but could not find it. Can you advise? I'll be happy to do it if it is easy. Thanks!

joshua said...

let me know if this works for you:

(1) go to blogger.com to get to your "dashboard". the dashboard is where you can go to click new post, edit comments, design, stats, etc..

(2) click design

(3) click on one of the "add a gadget" links where you want the buttons to show up. there will be a window that pops up

(4) scroll down, about 5 from the bottom click on "subscription links" then click save.

view the blog and see if it is showing subscribe to "posts" and "all comments". i remember when i set it up the first time, it only showed "posts". i can't remember how i got it to show "all comments".

i just added the subscription links to two of my other blogs that didn't have the buttons, and it is showing both the posts and all comments buttons. i don't know if this is because blogger automatically is doing that now, or i somehow changed some setting.


i just discovered another work around as well. if folks want to paste the link below into their reader, they should be able to get all comments.

http://traderx.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default?orderby=published