013108 - CNQR - 15mins - Observation

Symbol: CNQR

• Here is another trade that I would have taken had I been watching it unfold
• CNQR gapped up during opening, painted a very strong bar
• It followed by 2 consecutive Inside Bars. A weak bar followed by a stronger bar
• The 4th bar was a Hammer-wanna-be. The Upper Shadow was actually too long to be considered a Hammer
• And looking at it again now, I also noticed that the 4th bar also failed to closed above the Opening High. Something that I missed during real-time.
• But at that moment, had I been watching it unfold in real-time, my entry would have been the 4th bar, when it crossed the Opening High
• I would have Stopped Out by the 8th bar, and the prices did seem to have gain enough strength to go any further

013108 - HRS - 15mins - Observatoin

Symbol: HRS

• It was already more than an hour into trading before I came across HRS


• It was clear to me that a resistance level has formed slight above the Opening Range High


• A review of the Daily chart shows that a Pivot Point / Resistance level has formed (at the yellow line on both charts.)


• I set a Price Alert a tick below the yellow line, thinking that I would enter Long when prices cross the Pivot Point


• I don't know why, but I missed the Alert when it happened!


• When I've found out the prices have crossed the line, it was already in the red bar coming back down


• I seriously thought about entering Long, but decided against it


• The thing is, had I been watching the market more closely, I knew I would have entered this trade, which would result in another losing trade


• I'm still debating if I should record this trade into my spreadsheet as if I really did executed this trade. Because I knew I would, had I was watching it as it happened


• HRS is now also on my Watch List. Let's see how it works out tomorrow

013108 - JBHT - 15mins - Observation

Symbol: JBHT

• Remember my failed trade from yesterday on JBHT?
• For what reasons? I don't know! But I decided to revisit JBHT, not for potential trades, but to just see if there were any opportunities
• The first chart shows how JBHT performed today, along with notation of my entry and exit from yesterday
• As you can see, JBHT totally surpassed yesterday's performance and moved on to (almost) reaching my yesterday's target of 138% Fib (from day-before/yesterday)
• The second chart is a Daily Chart (kind of) showing why JBHT resisted at where it resisted today. Sort of like a Pivot Point.
• In fact, today's performance on the Daily Chart painted a very nice Bullish Engulfing bar. A very strong bull signal, if confirmed its run tomorrow.
• I have added JBHT to the watchlist that I have just started building. (Something that I want to start doing for 2008.)
• Please! Please feel free to comment on your observation. I would like to hear your opinion.

013008 - JBHT - 10mins - Loss*Paper

Symbol: JBHT
Type: Short
Result: Lost -1R

• First, congratulations to myself for making the first trade of 2008!
• Sadly, my first trade of the year turns out to be losing trade!
• I picked up JBHT from the Briefing gapper list found on Wall St. Warrior's Blog (daily).
• I wasn't really paying attention to JBHT in the beginning because of the first 2 weak bars, with the first bar left behind an upper shadow
• At approximately 10:45, JBHT painted 2 consecutive Inside+Hammer+NR7-bar-combo.
• That's when I thought it might worth a try!
• My Target was the Opening High, and my Stop was set to the low of the first of the two combo bars
• I entered long when prices cleared 2 ticks above the 2nd combo bar
• 2 bars later, I was stopped out.
• This is the only trade that I made today. Sadly, my first trading day of the year was cut short. Too short, in my opinion! I was hoping that it would at least go sideway for a while, to give me some false hope (and to get me excited.) A 1R lost for a few minutes of excitment (before it turns south) is too costly!
• What do you think of this trade? How would you have handled this trade differently? Feel free to leave me a comment to discuss.
  

012308 - PALM - 15mins - Observation

Symbol: PALM

Type: Short

• First, 'No', I didn't trade today! The only thing that I traded was a few shares of dirty diapers during Pre-opening hours!
• I'm assuming that there were tons of gappers this morning. I was just browsing different stocks to see their damages and I came across this one, PALM.
• It seems to be dummy setup with 2 consecutive Inside Bars + NR7 combo, formed right around the base.
• I would place my Protective Stop at the 5eMA level, since the prices never closed above it prior the entry point.
• Should be at least 5R profit. I just don't know if there were shares available to Short. (If you do know, please kindly leave a comment, just so I know.)
• I hope my readers caught this one, or the many other opportunities out there today.

Good Trades to You!

011808 - XLNX - 15mins - Observation

It is getting extremely challenging to even monitor the market, let alone paper trading these days. I don't want to bore my readers with (first-time) parenthood stuff, but taking care of an infant is no easy task! Yes, I'm supposed to be practising my trading, secretly, while I'm at work. But when I cannot even make it to work on-time, because of late-night baby/daddy duties, it makes it extra tough for me to watch the market while I have to catch up on my work stuff! To make things worse, I have been slammed with a very big project that even if I don't have a baby, or trading, I would still have to put in 50+ hours per week of work time! Now factor my lack of sleep every night... well, you get the idea!

Anyway, I did manage to watch some charts for 2 days from last week, and 3 days this week. Amongst these few days, I didn't really spot any setups... mostly because of my rusty skills and observation from lack of practises in the past few months.

Today, I ALMOST entered long on the following XLNX trade, but just like I mentioned, I was very rusty...


Symbol: XLNX
Type: Long

• I missed the first entry where the blue arrow. By the time I got to work, and started everything, I think was already 6 or 7 bars deep.
• A potential 2nd entry was at the white arrow. That is also the spot where I was considering a Long entry
• I didn't because I was just starring at the chart... wondering... and wondering.. and watching the prices blew right by me
• Anyway, had I entered Long, I would have Stop-out during the next red bar

Well, at least I got something started. The next few months are going to tough. There are even a few business trips lined up. So my posting will be light. Please bare with me. I'm not giving up because I am still very much interested in this! The fact that I've been paper trading for this long, should show you that my interest is for real. Thanks for hanging in there, and thanks for reading my blog!

I'm Almost Ready to Chart!

While I was on Paternity Leave my own Vacation Hours so that I can spend time with my new-born, my company swapped my computer with a new one, and a larger monitor. It means that all my settings and layouts in QuoteTracker are all gone!

So today, I finally found some time, while at work, of course, to re-configure QuoteTracker from scratch. As I'm setting up things, I have a strong feeling that my past few months of work/practise are going to be wasted! I almost feel like I don't remember the rules, the approaches, the do's and don't, of what I have learned in trading so far. Technically speaking, I haven't been paper trading for more than 2 months!

With that thought in mind, I know I need to get back into the rhythm as soon as possible! Now that my QuoteTracker is allllmoooost done, I am hoping that my busy work schedule will give me a break to get a trade or two this week!

Stay tuned and thank you for your continuous support!