Best of Trades, Worst of Trades, Some of the Others too

Not a big deal... A somewhat marginal set-up in that it was shorting a breakdown into possible support, but very much worth taking in my opinion because, a) the consolidation at LOD was also at previous day's low, b) the larger market was trending conspicuously weakly at the time, c) there seemed to be the potential for major follow-through on a breakdown on TMPW's current topping pattern (an intraday H&S created by yesterday's wide range reversal).

Will be watching TMPW closely again tomorrow, I expect.
 

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may have been the most interesting or most tradable move of the day . After the breakdown of that agonizing all-day range failed to extend, apparently catching strong support established over the course of weeks, short-covering appeared to get "out of control," and enabled a breakout from the same range to next higher resistance. For today, at least, support ca. 945 turned out to be stronger than resistance ca. 955.

"glassinc" in the chatroom was the first person to call the bounce that I noticed, though a lot of us had earlier been speculating about a possible countertrend move. I even had a decent though minor long trade on severely beaten-down THQI earlier in the day, though I was short CYMI around the time of the aborted breakdown. I'd taken some profits near what turned out to be CYMI's low, and was managing the remnant near breakeven when I had a freak power failure in my apartment - had never happened before, in fact. By the time I got back on-line, CYMI was just about at breakeven, and I saw what was going on. I counted myself lucky to have covered in time: A few minutes later and I would have erased my entire day's profits, or worse.

If the position had been any larger, or had been in worse shape when the power failure hit, or if I had thought the market was at all likely to bounce like it ended up doing, I would have called up and closed the position by phone. That WOULD have been the right thing to do - I was lucky this time. And the whole thing may have added to a feeling of exhaustion and uncertainty that may in turn have helped keep me from participating in the rally - too busy sighing in relief...

I'm not trying to trade every move - I'm trying to trade when the odds are in my favor, and having the odds in one's favor includes being alert and confident, I think.
 

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Originally posted by nitro
Kymar (oye, I can't get used to KymarFye),

Just shoot some spoos from the hip and get rid of all those lines on those charts...

Either way, best of luck to you...

nitro
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Y'know, nitro, ol' bean, I've studied different TA techniques and trading methodologies, and I've read a lot of anti-TA stuff, too. I've done a ton of system development and testing, and just about destroyed myself and my account trading a system that looked just great on paper and in theory. Over all this time, even going back to when I was first watching intraday charts and marveling at my first indicators and how magically they SEEMED to set up trades, the one thing that's been constant is how often I've seen price react to "those lines on those charts." There were literally thousands of times I'd bring up some old chart, and some interesting "line" from days, weeks, months, or even years earlier was right in the middle of the action, getting tagged up and down, and so on, and so on...

When I look at a chart like the one of the NQ that I just posted, I really have to laugh at the idea that some academic theorists and anti-TA pseudo-gurus like to propound - that price action is essentially or effectively "random." In my opinion, those who take such a position are revealing the insufficiency of their methods or their own bias, ignorance, or incompetence.
 
Was hesitant about taking this trade, as ATVI, though clearly in a downtrend, appeared to me to have made a nice bottom while reacting to the THQI debacle last week. The result still led to a decent result, but should have been better, as I misshandled the attempt to cover half the position at cessation of the direct move, using too wide a limit order, and didn't even get the total cost of trade (commissions) out of it.

I think my doubt going in led to a lack of confidence, which in turn led to a case of "happy feet" - instead of planting to throw my pass, I let it go early, and narrowly avoided an interception... Events like this bring trading into the realm of self-expression - not always a positive thing - and illustrate how critical the psychological factor can be, in "real," practical terms.

Did pretty well on the second half - interesting how ATVI tagged s/r levels, even in the midst of this frenetic gap-up reaction to an earnings report.
 

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Well... I thought IDCC was coming down along with the rest of the market. Instead, in action fairly typical of this "rally mode" market, the seeming breakdown reversed. In the meantime, IDCC also moved on to new highs. I still could have gotten back out near breakeven, but, when it made a new HOD, I was done with it.

I knew it was a marginal set-up, at best, and got suckered into it by the apparent similarities between its pattern and the larger market's. I was also influenced by concurrent success that i was having with a more typical short breakdown (ACXM). With OK open profits on AXCM, I was emboldened to take a more "speculative" position in a relatively strong stock. There were certainly better choices. Instead of taking them, for the second day in a row, I shorted into 13. If I were Alan Farley writing a new edition of THE MASTER SWING TRADER, I'd put that in my trading rules: Don't get short into 13.00.

Just kidding... but it was lame to take the trade. Because I'd under-capitalized the position, I gave it a wider stop than it probably deserved, but at least I didn't get too badly hurt by it.
 

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Originally posted by KymarFye
"There were only two subjects in the universe worth knowing: thermodynamics and information theory. Blood cells in a capillary, rioters on Main Street, travelers vectoring some new arbovirus from the Amazon Preserve--life, and its side effects--all the same thing, really. The only difference was the scale and the label. Once you figured that out, you wouldn't have to choose between epidemiology and air traffic control. You could do either, at a moment's notice. You could do pretty much anything."
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1) String Theory
2) Stable Homotopy Rings of Spheres

nitro
 
y'know... had a little pentimento and deleted the post, but you caught it... so, thar she blows...

excellent book - nihilistic mid-21st C. sci-fi story...
 
Originally posted by nitro

1) String Theory
2) Stable Homotopy Rings of Spheres

nitro
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String Theory - about that I know a thing or two, nothing fundamental, but enough to get spaced out about it and have an intuitive feeling for what an intuitive feeling of an intuitive feeling about it might be...

Stable Homotopy Rings of Spheres... love the lingo... Greek poetry... What is it? Or would you like me to guess?
 
Didn't get hurt very badly on this one, but left a little on the table, and ended up taking a small loss overall.

Things started out fairly badly with a partial fill. As a result, the direct move to initial target that might have seemed okay on 1000 shares looked like a waste of time on only 200. On the other hand, the volume was weak, the spreads looked huge, and Tradestation's recent problems on L2 made managing the trade even more difficult. It was difficult to find an ask to cover into, and for long periods MOVI appeared to be trading with a spread as wide as the distance from LOD to Open: The maximum favorable excursion of the trade. All the same, still could have at least added to my day's total rather than subtracting from it, however marginally. Probably also should at least have tried to get an advantageous fill by whatever means.
 

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