9/29/11 (Thursday)
14 trades
6 winners
8 losers
+7 R
Daily score 5
I said Iâll take it easy yesterday, but today everything was in crash mode, SINA BIDU WYNN, NFLX. The movements were insane. I tried to trade with the trend but everything was down so much already, I was just seeing potential bounces everywhere. I made money buying the bounces in WYNN, BIDU and SINA around 10:50, lost money in NFLX.
I know that buying bounces in climatic selloffs is a dangerous thing to do, and Iâve stated in the beginning to not trade against the trend. But Iâm very conflicted right now about how to proceed. I see these kinds of V shaped parabolic moves almost every day, and itâs very hard to just stand aside and do nothing, especially when they do bounce, they retrace so much. I donât honestly think I can stay away from these kinds of setups. So if I canât stay away, I need to define how I will trade them.
Use smaller size than usual to compensate for the volatility.
Know exactly how I will react before I get in to a trade.
If the trade doesnât behave the way I expected it to, I must not hesitate in getting out.
If the expected V shape doesnât occur in a timely fashion, get out.
If the V shape does happen, hold for bigger gains.
The most important thing when trading against climatic selloffs is to not double down. Get out at predefined stops and donât rush back in again.
When I lost big trading against the trend previously, I made the mistakes of getting in to the trade way too early and using bigger and bigger size after each stop out. And on several occasions, Iâve cancelled the stops altogether, and kept adding to the loser. The result was one huge spectacular loser that wiped out months of gains. I must not repeat those mistakes again. If I can keep the losers small, buying V bounces can still be tremendously profitable.