Greenleaf's Journal

I am likely planning on going flat into the long weekend as I don't want to take a risk and give back my unrealized gains.

My feeling is that this recent bullish activity over the past day and a half will last into tomorrow morning, but who knows about after that and especially Monday.

So, I will try to maximize my return tomorrow on my open positions.

I will, however, scan the market tomorrow as I don't want to rule anything out. I will see if there is any multi-day type setup that I am willing to risk the long weekend on.
 
I wrote a custom software package for my trading over the past few years. It is always a work in progress.

Attached is a screen shot from my app. It is the screen where I spend most of my time.

First, a little background. I take the universe of stocks and narrow it down by price and volume. I then rank them from 1 to 100 every day using a formula I came up with involving the volatility. This is the "rank" column on the screen print. The actual value each stock is ranked by is in the ADR column (it's not quite the ADR, but I never changed the column name).

Using the next and prev buttons, I go through the charts, looking at three timeframes (daily, intra, weekly). I then assign each stock a score based on how I feel about it. 100 means I own it, 90 means go and buy it if there's a good entry, 80 means keep a close eye on it, 40 means ignore for now, etc.

Each chart has an entry, target, and stop line (yellow, green, and red). I can drag these on the chart as needed and the numbers above the chart change. I move the stop line up as the price moves, but never down once I'm in a position.

As an aside, this line on the chart idea was one I got from the Tony Oz video CDs someone was asking about in a different thread.

The formulas in the middle need some fine tuning, but are meant to tell me different things about the trade as it's happening.

More to come...
 

Attachments

I closed out all of my positions today and booked $496. I was nervous entering the day that I would give up most of my gains from yesterday given the poor unemployment numbers before the open. In fact, this caused me to sell UNTD pretty soon into the session when it started tumbling. I did not want to give back my profits (I had an unrealized $192 yesterday) so I sold it and took $152. It recovered and went higher, but, as someone else posted, that’s part of the business.

Since my intent was to go into the weekend flat and try to get as much as I could out of the positions I had, I was watching the market indicators. I usually watch the DOW and NASDAQ, and figured out that the stocks I had were more closely mirroring the NASDAQ movement. I didn’t want to take any chances when I saw it hovering around +5 and going back to +1 and to 0 and to +2 again. I had a feeling there would be a selloff before the long weekend and since it is a short session today, I did not want to wait for it.

USG had opened down pretty far and started to creep back 45 minutes in. I sold this one first as I didn't want it to go negative again on me. PDLI was looking pretty strong, and I probably would’ve held it longer if it wasn’t for the long weekend. But I sold it. CREE was arguably starting a downtrend when I bought it, and I was just hoping for a little bounce. So when that starting selling down a bit as well, I unloaded it for a small profit.

Finally, WEBX. This one traded in too narrow a range over the couple days I had it for my liking. I’ll have to look back and see how I could’ve spotted that before I bought. It was ranked 72 out of 100 as of yesterday for me. Maybe I’ll just have to look at the top 50 as primary and the second 50 only as needed. I only pulled $128 out of it with 500 shares. Not worth the risk.
 

Attachments

So as expected, I am flat going into the weekend.

I will have three days to look at this week's trades and see what I could've done better. I will also go through all 100 stocks in my rankings and identify some good long candidates and some good short candidates so I'll be ready for whatever the market brings on Monday.

I also have some enhancements to implement in my trading app.

I will post some charts at some point this weekend.

-- Dickie Greenleaf
 
greenleaf,

Hey, this journal is great. That s/w you designed looks good too. I like the way you do things, and I think you will be past the 25k in no time if you keep your disciplined approach. I'll be looking forward to your chart posts this weekend.
 
Quote from AAAintheBeltway:

greenleaf,

Hey, this journal is great. That s/w you designed looks good too. I like the way you do things, and I think you will be past the 25k in no time if you keep your disciplined approach. I'll be looking forward to your chart posts this weekend.
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Thank you very much for the feedback. I greatly appreciate your taking the time to type it. I was thinking about your advice from the other thread about closing positions today during the heat of battle and it helped.
 
Quote from greenleaf:

I am likely planning on going flat into the long weekend as I don't want to take a risk and give back my unrealized gains... but who knows about after that and especially Monday.
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I read a study once citing that overall, markets don't move dramatically between the week's close and the week's open (Of course, if you're long the weekend and you get hit hard, then all the studies in the world won't make you feel better about it, but the reverse could happen too). The reason given was that markets aren't open over the weekend, so the activity/volatility is really pared down. After the markets balance the incoming weekend orders come open on Monday, it's just like any other day, that is, the markets typically fall back into the last day's trading range. Just a thought.
 
Quote from gms:

I read a study once citing that overall, markets don't move dramatically between the week's close and the week's open (Of course, if you're long the weekend and you get hit hard, then all the studies in the world won't make you feel better about it, but the reverse could happen too). The reason given was that markets aren't open over the weekend, so the activity/volatility is really pared down. After the markets balance the incoming weekend orders come open on Monday, it's just like any other day, that is, the markets typically fall back into the last day's trading range. Just a thought.
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Thank you. I don't doubt the truth of this study. I guess I'm not completely bullish, feeling that any day the market could tank. There's also an extra day for any bad news in the world. They're talking about all of this Liberia stuff now. The bottom line is that I can't afford drawdowns with my account size, so it's better to lock in profits than take a chance. I am confident in my ability to pick other stocks, and I can also reenter these guys on Monday again if I want.

Please keep your comments and feedback coming. This goes to everyone. All are welcome to post here, negative or positive.

-- Dickie Greenleaf
 
If one traded the e-minis, one could hedge by going short in either YM or ES. You wouldn't benefit from a gap, but you'd at least be hedged against catastrophe and easily unwind from your position on Monday morning.
 
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