Friday's results: +$1,477.44 -- 108,200 shares traded
Good solid day yesterday. Although I traded over 100k shares, it felt a lot less active and lot more sitting back and watching trades stop themselves out and continue to march along further. I didn't really take many trades because I made a few changes to my approach and I hadn't quite figured out my exit on my losers. I was kind of trading on the fly...and that's not my strength. Wednesday afternoon I reviewed my numbers and the stats indicated that my strength is to give my winners more room to run instead of babysitting trades and getting in and out of the same stock 4-5 times a day.
Over the past two days I've found myself holding my best winners nearly all day -- which is a far cry from holding for 10-15 minutes and getting out on the first sign of a wiggle. With this approach, I'll be able to add to winners as they advance upward/downward (I may add to winners at subsequent breakouts this week, but not with much size) So this upcoming week, with my entire approach hammered out, I plan on taking more signals, setting stops and moving on to the next trade.
The past two days have been moderately bullish. My breakout style is well positioned to capitalize on somewhat-to-moderately-to-extremely bullish days. It will be interesting to see how effective it is when the market isn't as strong. I hope that now that I'm 100% ready to move forward systematically that the tone doesn't totally shift. I have a breakdown style as well, but I haven't been working this approach during a time where the market has been in a downtrend, so I have no idea how my breakout/breakdown approach will work in that environment.
If the market structure shifts, I'll be playing a lot more fades, earnings plays, and looking to short the stocks that have had a nice run recently.
