ARGHHH!!!! Pre-cappuccino trading. Botched entry started me out on a 27 cent loss. Noobs reading this, see the little blue dash marking my entry? In a trend, always let the stock approach the mean. The center lane, if you will. Or wherever in recent history it pulls back to, in its minor fluctuations within the trend. I could have come in ten minutes later for 18 cents less. Now I won't be in the green for another half hour if the trend holds. The sooner a trade is solidly in the green, the sooner you can safely move your stop up to lock the trade into profitability mode. You don't want a trade to spend a half hour or an hour in catch up mode because you are vulnerable for that time, for no reason. If at any time you are vulnerable, you want to at least be somewhat profitable. On this chart, I would have been at the green break at the close of the next bar, and barely into profit by the second one. As I write this, 15 minutes later, I am watching the price march upwards nicely but still in the red.
The reference point here is the three white lines. Bollinger bands. The center line is a moving average. The upper and lower are two standard deviations. In an up trend the price will mostly stay above the center line since this is an average of the previous several prices. It will seldom penetrate the upper or lower in a meaningful way. If it crosses the center line you are looking at a possible down trend within the time frame of your chart, especially if the body of the cander crosses under. So you can see how even in an uptrend, you can lose money with a bad entry and especially with a terror exit or a stop that is too tight.
Holey guacamoley! That was a brutal opening bell! QQQ gapped up though so everything should come back up okay. Patience patience. Meanwhile I am making a few dollars scalping TQQQ as it saws its way upward.
I lost heart and bailed. Tried scalping TQQQ and SQQQ and the riddim was just not there. Tried playing QQQ when it started looking stable but the long range scanner showed diddly until I found RUHN which was very much in play. Bought on the consolidation before confirmation and it paid off nicely with a $288 win. I figured it would bounce back down at the $7.00 mark and so I set the limit at $750 in case it ran, then aggressively walked the stop up and caught it at $676 on the way back down. That brought me back up to -$976. I will watch it for another setup and hopefully recoup a little more.
Here I am already set up for the next run. You can see the blue dash where I bought at just over $6.00 and then the red dash where I sold at just over $6.75. That's the way it is supposed to work. Now waiting to see if it will fly again and I think maybe not. I am back into HRL and RRD and they have drug me down a bit but the trend is up and they are both near the mean, with stops under the centerline. QQQ is coming up. I am not into it at the moment but I like to watch it to guage the overall market direction when I am not trading it. Same with TVIX which is down for now.
Still got my eye on RUHN in case it ruhns up for me.
Darn. Stupid RUHN. stopped out three times. DONE with RUHN. Holding nothing but HRL now. I am thinking I am kinda stuck with it until after the bell. Folks gotta eat. I am thinking it is still trending up, relative to the market and as it picks up later, it will reflect in the price. At the moment it is a $.12 loser and just sliding sideways. I think I will set it on autopilot with a trailing stop, and pull me a beer. I feel like I been sorting wildcats all morning. P&L showing -$1603. Please, everybody support our favorite canned processed animal byproduct food substance! Have a nice Trailerpark Tenderloin (spam) sammitch! Let's get this stock up out of the grass!
