Observations: ADM, BG, ERIC, TIF, and UBS.

I tried, and wanted, to make a trade today, but I just couldn’t spot any Entries!  Here are a few charts that I was looking at this morning.

• It was a NR7 + Inside Bar + (almost) Hammer, and I wanted to go Long had prices broke through the previous bar high
• My Target would be merely the next Fib Level
• It would still put me at 2R profit, had it worked out the way I wanted it to
• It didn’t, and you are looking at the reason why it didn’t
• Fortunately, I didn’t jumped the gun

• With BG, I was hoping that the lowering 5eMA would act as Resistance and push the prices back to the Day-Low
• The Entry Bar was the Inverted Hammer (see circled), and my Entry was set to the Previous Bar low
• I thought with the market in such a Bearish mode, it’s easy to drop back down.
• It didn’t, and my trade didn’t get triggered
• I’m certainly ‘okay’ with it looking at the chart now

• I was hoping for a Base and Break and it never happened
• Once again, I was proud of myself for sticking to my entry rules, and never dive-in ahead of time in anticipation of what *could* happen
• In this case, nothing!

• With TIF, I was almost certain that Yesterday’s Low would act as Resistance and push the prices back towards its Day Low
• Too much wishful thinking there!
• It looks like Yesterday’s Low was blown away just like that!

• As for UBS above, I saw the 3rd Bar Inverted Hammer, but I just couldn’t see an entry in the shorter time-frame
• As prices fell pass the Opening Low, I thought I’ve missed the entry (as mentioned in Twitter.)
• It turned out that this is another ‘Good Miss!’

Overall, I’m proud of myself for sticking to my rules, and not “early-entry” into these positions.  But “not trading” means “no money.”  I need my trades to be more frequent, and more accurate.

LVS – A Slight Win

• An unconvincing Base and Break trade
• Unconvincing because I really didn’t see any entry bar signaling an Entry
• Instead, I just took the Opening Range Low (15mins) as the Base/Pivot Point, and entered Short when prices dropped below that level
• Once I was committed to this trade, I adjusted the Stop continuously to a level that makes sense
• I was then Stopped Out at $6.12
• Prices did eventually hit my Target of 138%Fib

TCK - My First Lost in 2009

• I tried to chase this trade!
• I didn’t really see an entry signal, and I still chose to enter Short when the prices dropped below the Open/Day Low.
• My Target was the 138%Fib., and it never even reached 119%
• It hit my Protective Stop eventually, and the prices never reached a low again

DRYS – There Were Plenty Left On The Table!

As mentioned in yesterday’s post, I was expecting DRYS to pull back to the next Fib. Level, before continuing its rise. 

With such belief in mind, the first stock that I pulled up today was DRYS, especially when the market is in such Bearish mood today.

DRYS Gapped Down first thing in the morning and slowly reclaimed its lost ground, all the way beyond Yesterday’s Low.

From the Chart below, you can see that the 2nd Bar almost formed an Inverted Hammer.  As the 3rd Bar was forming, I zoomed-out the Chart to 3 Days Interval and noticed that the potential Support Line can be drawn from Monday’s Day-High.  And since the prices have yet to close ‘above’ the 5eMA, I decided to enter Short when prices broke the low of the 3rd bar, with my Protective Stop set at the top of the 3rd bar, hoping that the ‘u-turning’ 5eMA will act as my Resistance.

Unfortunately, the Upper Shadow of the 4th Bar surpassed by Protective Stop by just that bit (see below), and forced me to exit my entire position, automatically of course.

With all those self-belief in me, I decided to re-enter the trade, this time when the prices broke the Low of the 4th bar (Remarks:  I’ve switched from 15mins to 10 mins chart by now.)  This time, I tried to be more cautious and set my Protective Stop just right above the 5th bar high (meaning less R for the run.)

By now, I was trying to plot out the potential Support Levels for my exit, if necessary.  The Opening Bar’s range was so wide that I did have some doubts that it might not hit its Day-Low, today. 

I pulled the Fib from Day-High to Day-Low, and the most obvious Pilot Point was at the 80%Fib. Level.  And obviously, and again, at Day-Low.  (See circles in the Chart below.)

Although I did adjust my Protective Stop, I didn’t follow it too closely by changing the Stop to previous bar’s High.  If so, the very few Up-bar (Blue) that you see below might have exited my position.   Which prompts me to think… I need to really learn how to master the skills of determining my Protective Stops.

Unfortunately, I had to leave for a meeting, and I was forced to exit the trade right before 1400hrs.  Otherwise, I would have caught on to a very nice run.  Prices didn’t stop until hitting the 161%Fib!

Range Contraction – by Wall St. Warrior

I just learned something new!  It’s called Range Contraction, and I read all about it from Trader Jamie’s blog.

Fibonacci Points: DRYS

DRYS has been on my radar in the past few days and this evening, I took some time to study DRYS on a longer time-frame chart.  (Part of my New Year Resolution!)

I’ve circled all the points that DRYS reacted to the major Fibonacci Retracement points, and not surprisingly, today’s closing price is exactly at the 50% Fib. Retracement from October High to December Low. 

My prediction is that the prices of DRYS will retrace back a bit to the $12.60-ish level, before continuing its upward clime again. 

Let’s see how it will turn out.  Meanwhile, chime in if you have some feedback to share!

Observations: MS, TCK, and BBY

I was in the market today but couldn’t find any trade to execute.  I just want to post a few charts to document my thought/selection process on a few set-ups that I thought about going-in, but chose not to.  Almost all of them didn’t work out the way I wanted to, so I guess it must be a good thing.

1)  I thought about enter long off of the 4 bar hammer-like high, but the upper shadow of the first 3 bars stopped me from doing so.  If entered, I would have got stopped-out for a break-even, if not a small lost when prices retraced back to the Opening High.  It now looks like the Opening High could be a Pivot Point.  As you can see, prices did reach the 138Fib.

2) Next one is TCK.  I put significant amount of time debating if I want to move-in with a Long, as prices broke the hammer-like high on the 6th bar on the 3-minute chart.

 

It still looked somewhat convincing when I flipped over to the 5-minute chart… a Long entry above the high of the 4th bar

 

But neither the 10, nor the 15 minute chart showed convincing entry point.  (See the next 2 charts below.)  Therefore, I gave up the move, and as it turned out, it was an excellent decision.

The last one is BBY.  Looking the chart now, I don’t even know what I was looking at this chart.  I don’t even know what to comment here!  (Should I just remove this chart?)

No trades is still better than a losing trade.  That’s is what I’ve been telling myself, and I need to add this ‘no-trade’ concept onto my New Year Resolution!

First Trade of 2009 - TBT

• I thought I was looking at a ‘Cup and Handle’ setup, but soon after I entered the trade, I doubted myself
• Not until I have entered the trade, I noticed that there were already 2 waves to long-solid up bar (see chart below)
• And I was already prepared for an exit after the 3rd wave
• Since the entry wasn’t ideal, I was particularly cautious
• The down bar that you see below actually went all the below my entry-line

• But as you can see below, prices did go above and beyond my target, of 138% Fib.

• The good news is, this little trade still earned me a bit over 2R
• I’m happy to start the New Year with 2R!

2009 New Year Resolution

This list is what I’ve came up with in the past few days.  I’m hoping this list will help me to be a better Trader in 2009.  This list is subject to updates, and I’ll elaborate a bit more on each item as time permits.  Meanwhile, if you have comments or suggestions, please feel free to drop me a note.

1. Increase the number of ‘Trading Days’
2. Be more selective with my Executions
3. Diversify my trading strategies
4. Maintain a trading journal/spreadsheet, in addition to this blog
5. Improve communications/networking among Traders/Bloggers
6. Begin real-money trading by year-end
7. Read-up on my trading books

(DRYS) - Observation

(I’m having some issues with my charting software this weekend, so please excuse these 2 temporary charts copied from MarketWatch.)

I tried to trade today but I have to admit that I’m still feeling very rusty with everything.  I was only able to picked out (DRYS), while everything else seemed to me that they are ‘un-fit’ to be traded. 

I almost pulled the trigger shortly before 11am.  Although it turned out to be the correct decision, I actually thought that I missed a great run.  For the record, the reason why I didn’t pull the trigger was because of all those Upper Shadows formed in every single bar since opening.  I interpreted that as resistance-aplenty lying around the Opening High.  The second reason why I didn’t pull the trigger is because there weren’t really an Entry Bar at all!  Technically, speaking, I shouldn’t even be posting this charts because this set-up is just one of the many that I discarded yesterday morning.  But since I want to post something to start-off the year, hence came (DRYS).

The question that pondered me afterwards, was that even though it didn’t hit my 138Fib level, shouldn’t I still somehow find a way to ride that small wave up?  If yes, then how?

Anyway, I’m just happy that I started trading again. 

Once again, Happy New Year to all my readers!

Happy New Year!

Wishing all my Readers a wonderful New Year!

Thank you for your continuous support!

It Feels Good to be Back!

I traded for the first time in more than a year, today! 

It feels so good to be back even though I didn’t execute any trade.  I was still getting myself accustom to this forgotten environment again. 

There are 2 new things that I tried today.  First is using FinViz as a screener, while the second is using Twitter to keep track of what I was monitoring this morning.

FinViz stands for Financial Visualization, if I’m not mistaken.  I’ve been using FinViz to keep up-to-date with how the 3 major indices are doing in the past year.  So this morning, I though I would give its Screener a try.  It turned out that I like it a lot, and I do believe that I will continue to use FinViz to screen for gappers.

As for Twitter, long time reader of my blog knows that I have Twitter gadget installed on my blog almost since day one.  I’ve always looked at Twitter as a micro-blogging tool, which is exactly what it is.  But today, as I Tweet on the stocks that I’m monitoring, I realized that at the end of the day, I can actually go back to Twitter to review all the stocks that I was monitoring, and maybe to find out if I’ve missed any good set-ups, or simply monitoring the wrong stocks.

With this though in mind, I might even expand Twitter’s real estate on my blog, to give it more exposure.  Since I can’t really ‘blog’ all the stocks that I monitor, in detail, I see Twitter as a good alternative.  If you haven’t added me onto your Twitter’s friend list, my User Name is simply ClosetDaytrader. 

Once again, it’s good to be back!  However, there will be no trading for the next 2 days, until the New Year. 

Happy New Year to you all!

What Have I Been Doing?

So what had happened in the past few months?  To me, the biggest news in the past few months is to see Trader-X returns to blogging.  I’ve been a (so far… poor student) of his approach, and I really enjoy reading his blog.  If you haven’t read his blog, I don’t know what you are doing here reading up on mine.  Head over to his blog now and check it out!

I also noticed that TradingGoddess sends over a lot of referrals to my site.  To that, I want to say a big thank you!  Unfortunately, I’m afraid that I might have disappointed quite a few of his readers because of my lack of posting in the past few months.  In addition, TradingGoddess is also very active in Twittering.  If you have an account with Twitter, you might want to add him to your list.  

I also want to give a big hats-off to Trader Jamie.  Jamie helped me a lot last year when I tried to kick things off.  I’ve been a loyal reader of his blog since day one.

Not only have I been reading a lot of trading blogs in the past few months, I have also been adding a lot of new blogs into my Google Reader.  If you check out the "My Blog Roll" section to the left of my blog, you'll see that I have incorporated a few of my most often read blogs/RSSFeeds.  If you don't have them in your Reader, you should certainly add them!

The Law of Infinity

I was having a conversation over lunch with a friend of mine recently.  He asked if I believe in the concept of ‘infinity’ in mathematics.  Since I thought I understood a few infinity-related equations, back in High-School, my answer was ‘Yes, of course!’

So he asked…

If I have to travel from 0 to a 100 meter mark, I have to first past the half way point, 50 meter mark, in order to get to the 100 meter mark.  To determine the half way point, I would simply divide 100 by 2.  Standing at the  50 meter mark, now, if I have to reach the 100 meter mark, I would have to first past the half way point of, ((100-50)/2)+first50meter= 75 meter mark, in order to reach the 100 meter mark. 

Now if the concept of infinity is… legit/valid/true, I would never reach my destination because I will be continuing my ‘dividing’ up to the infinity!

Putting the law of mathematics aside, what I got from my friend’s question is…

1)      If you don’t start your mission, you will never reach your goal no matter how poorly you are doing with your mission.  In my case, it will be Daytrading, or just trading in general.

2)      More importantly, if your goal seems to be un-reachable (like Trading, in my case), almost like an infinity, think about setting sub-goals that will lead  you towards your ultimate goal. Even you may still never get there, but it will at least bring you closer, and closer, and closer, and closer. 

Your thoughts?

Pulse Check... ... ... ...

Yes, I’m still here! 

I have people emailing me asking if I have ended my closet-daytrading career?  More importantly, my sponsor – the one who shared his lottery fortune by providing me with the necessary trading capital, has recently asked, during my son’s 1-year old birthday party, if I am to continue my trading. 

So I think it’s time for me to provide my readers with an update. 

First and foremost, I have not given up closet-daytrading yet!  I wouldn’t say I’m still in the game because I haven’t.  But I do still see myself as a student of trading.  In the past few months, I have continued to study trading by reading books and blogs.  The only thing that I haven’t been doing is the actual paper trading.  Come to think of it, it has been more than 1 year since I last paper traded.  And the reason I stopped paper trading was because of me being a first-time Dad.  Now that my son is a year old, I think it’s time for me to pick it up again.  Therefore, I’m excited to announce that… I’m back!