NoDoji's Day Trading Log

[NoDoji]

Quote from mad_badger:

What does that advice say on the wall?

BigHog posted this somewhere on ET; not sure if it's actually his own or not:

Risk is relative to your experience.

Being aggressive at or just before your signals is relative to your courage.

Your courage is relative to your confidence.

Your confidence comes from knowing all of the above have been conquered.

The rest is easy.

(Mad, yes this keyboard is pure keyboard HEAVEN )

 

[Robert Weinstein]

Quote from mad_badger:

NoD,
Several things.

3) E-trade won't partial fill you b/c its not direct access and they trade against their customers, e-trade sells your order to a 3rd party, which is why you get the full fill -- always.


_mad

Nod,

If that is true that your not right on the market you NEED to leave E-Trade yday.

With all due respect to Mad I find it hard to believe that your interacting with E-Trade and not that actual market but find out for sure and if Mad is correct than you need to leave.

Why do you need to leave and why is it important? Because every time you buy and every time you sell you will be losing a penny or more per share on a normal stock and maybe 3 cents on an APOL. The funny thing is that you will not even know it by your trading except those times that you miss by a penny or so. Then you don't get your fill at all and you end up not getting a trade or worse taking a stop because the original exit was missed.

PS glad to see you found some useless paper, its a start

 

[NoDoji]

Quote from mad_badger:

Last thing, how on Earth are you able to see and judge price action when your price history is crammed into a tiny pane there, practically a horizontal line?

_mad

When I have a serious setup, I stretch that horizontal pane into a much larger size.

 

[NoDoji]

Quote from Robert Weinstein:

Nod,

If that is true that your not right on the market you NEED to leave E-Trade yday.

With all due respect to Mad I find it hard to believe that your interacting with E-Trade and not that actual market but find out for sure and if Mad is correct than you need to leave.

Why do you need to leave and why is it important? Because every time you buy and every time you sell you will be losing a penny or more per share on a normal stock and maybe 3 cents on an APOL. The funny thing is that you will not even know it by your trading except those times that you miss by a penny or so. Then you don't get your fill at all and you end up not getting a trade or worse taking a stop because the original exit was missed.

PS glad to see you found some useless paper, its a start

No, that's not true. I think I miscommunicated what happened. With IB the stock was offered at a specific limit price. It was partially filled for half a cent less than the limit, then when moving the offer down to get the rest of the fill, it was also filled for also half cent less than offered. When I asked my husband why the price we got was less than the limit, he said IB always fills at half a cent worse price than the limit order.

PowerEtradePro is direct access. I get filled immediately when the price hits my bid/offer. When I go in at market I almost always get the best bid/offer unless there's a wide spread and a lot of volatility (as with APOL after earnings). With a limit order I get the exact limit price, not half a cent more or less. I sometimes get a partial fill, and have to wait for the rest or move by bid/offer, but it's always at my exact limit price.

 

[Willleung]

hello NoDoji,

Just drop by to say hi, glad to see Win, MadB and Bob are all here.

Little note pads are great, usually i stable my daily notes together at EOD, and keep it , keep up the good work.

 

[BostonKiller]

Quote from BostonKiller:
Now quick, say something mean about me!

Quote from NoDoji:

It's a lot more than your desktop that's slow, Bos. And if you'd quit turning your head, you might manage to see a profitable setup and actually trade it!

But, but, but...I said "something mean" and now it's Flame Central all of a sudden!

(runs away crying)

 

[NoDoji]

+ $224

Had early limit order for MYGN @ 87.33, then it was moving close, so I moved my limit to @ 87.50, which was hit but only for a nanosecond, so no fill before it drops almost $1/share in 5 seconds. Then I stupidly thought it was too low to short.

Short HOTT @ 9.73 overbought, covered @ 9.62 oversold (too soon as always) for a $220 gain minus some serious ARCA fees. Used ARCA to show partial quantities on bid/offer, because HOTT is thinly traded and I don’t like to show 2K shares or more, but I’ve had no real problems in the past so it’s not worth the extra fees IMHO. Now here was a trade where if I’d set a stop at b/e I’d have made an additional $500 or more, because the oversold stall did not spark a rally.

But wait…based on “AngryHermit’s Law” if I’d set a stop at b/e, I would’ve been stopped out and then it would’ve immediately moved in my favor. Hermit, Bos, we need to get together and have an exorcism…

Set limit to short IDCC @ 32.15, just above previous resistance, and missed fill by .01 cent before it had a nice drop. I decided now to go back to market orders for entry, except on slow movers like HOTT, because I left so much money behind trying to short with limits.

Watching DVA for test of HOD and I’m tempted to short @ 52.27, but I sit on my hands because I’ve finally learned to be patient and I’ve seen this kind of post earnings gap play backfire on the shorts and this one has that smell to it. Sure enough it breaks out all the way above 52.60, but I didn’t short it there; still not comfortable with it as a short. Turned out that would’ve been a good short, but it then bounced to all new highs after that, breaking through 53.00, at which point I did not want to trade it because only a couple minutes left in the day. On my watch for tomorrow morning.

Short IDCC @ 31.93 pulled back from overbought. Used a market order and the price on it was jumping around so much I ended up with serious slippage. Then it took forever to drop even a bit, found support at 31.83, bounced, so I set a target at 31.83 oversold for a $50 gain because the price wasn’t strong enough for me to want to hold overnight.

Studied SPY today a bit. I like the way it signals on my 3-min chart.

 

[Builder17]

NoD,
I too use ETrade, and I am interested to know if/when you switch and how new broker works better for you. To what someone else said, I dont know if they use 3rd party. But we do get partial fills.
However, wanted to say that 3 times in the last couple months I have screwed by a couple cents on stops. I've only been trading for about a year now, and more seriously in the last 6 months, so Im still new, so I was going to ask (everybody), how common is this slippage? I've been meaning to write a letter to ETrade, but have been too busy.

As an example, (from what I can remember): I was short TIF (say $24) and had a stop of say 24.14. I watched the Level II quotes THE WHOLE TIME and got stopped out at 24.12 and this was the last/highest price hit of the day - that came across LevelII, and then TIF went back below 24 (this was at the end of the day, prob closed around 23.9. THis obviously made me pretty upset. My question is how common is this to all brokers? Or is this what you're talking about specific to Etrade? Appreciate the help. Thanks!

and by the way, I have really enjoyed reading (and learning from!) this journal. Keep it up!

 

[Robert Weinstein]

Quote from Builder17:

NoD,
I too use ETrade, and I am interested to know if/when you switch and how new broker works better for you. To what someone else said, I dont know if they use 3rd party. But we do get partial fills.
However, wanted to say that 3 times in the last couple months I have screwed by a couple cents on stops. I've only been trading for about a year now, and more seriously in the last 6 months, so Im still new, so I was going to ask (everybody), how common is this slippage? I've been meaning to write a letter to ETrade, but have been too busy.

As an example, (from what I can remember): I was short TIF (say $24) and had a stop of say 24.14. I watched the Level II quotes THE WHOLE TIME and got stopped out at 24.12 and this was the last/highest price hit of the day - that came across LevelII, and then TIF went back below 24 (this was at the end of the day, prob closed around 23.9. THis obviously made me pretty upset. My question is how common is this to all brokers? Or is this what you're talking about specific to Etrade? Appreciate the help. Thanks!

and by the way, I have really enjoyed reading (and learning from!) this journal. Keep it up!

I am going to jump into the thread and I think Nod would approve.

There is a couple of things that are missing from what your saying and maybe a mistake.

You say your stop was at 4.14 but you you stopped out at 4.12 ?? That does not make sense unless one of the numbers are wrong(or Etrade made a mistake).

If you were watching the L2 than you should be able to see if the print that took your stop was unusual like more than two or three cents away from the NBBO. It would also be helpful to know if your order was routed to the NYSE which it most likely was or to an ECN.

Timing is important too, was there a lot of prints in the area of your stop?

Lastly your stop was very tight it appears to say the least. Unless a stock is trading 10m or more per day a ten cent move is nothing. as a matter of fact the spread on this would have been 12.5 cents about ten years ago.

Best to you

Bob

 

[NoDoji]

(Bob, you can interject your two cents anytime.)

Builder, PowerEtradePro has been very good with fills and executions, but I've been stopped out at the top or bottom of a move before a reversal and I think that just happens a lot, because traders tend to place stops in similar places such as around the high or low of the day, or at moving averages, or other S/R levels. What I do now most of the time is use mental stops and exit at market if the price goes there, so I'm not left with the feeling the market makers are watching me through my monitors, which Bob told me, so it must be true

As for slippage, I rarely have a problem with it EXCEPT when the stock is thinly traded and I go into a large position at market, or when there's a spread and the price action is volatile. Putting on IDCC this afternoon, it was nuts, with about a .05 cent spread and price jumping from 32.05 to 31.94 to 31.88 to 32.00 to 31.84 from second to second. You can see the inconsistent fill on my blotter, and it was executed in about a second. So for my exit I used a limit order and that worked out fine, I just had to wait a while for the action to settle down before getting a fill.