It was a both a good morning and a bad morning for my daily screens. Good, because we saw a lot of stocks meet their targets. Bad, because most of them did not meet my criteria to get into trades. It’s entirely possible that, once again, those of you that trade differently than I do, made a lot more money off my scans than I did!
Still, I did take two trades today, the first of which was on Celgene Corp (Nasdaq: CELG) (click to enlarge):
It was maybe a little earlier in the day than I like to trade, but the narrow-range bars looked decent to me. More importantly, they gave me a decent stop. See how even that big up move on the 10:50 candle wouldn’t have even quite reached it? That’s a good stop!
The markets were negative at that point, so I got in. I got back out at the first sign of trouble, and the rest of the day’s action made that look like the “obvious” right choice. At the time, though, I was wondering if I hadn’t just left a lot of profit on the table. That’s the way it always goes.
With experience (and especially since I’ve been taking living expenses out of my trading account), I’ve come to favor consistency over bigger potential profits. It’s a trade-off everyone has to make, at the point where they feel comfortable.
I’m always extra cautious on the biotech stocks, though. They tend to whip around all over the place. I’m not sure why… probably just rampant speculation… but they all seem very difficult to trade well. When I was just getting into daytrading, my favorite stock was Briocryst Pharma (Nasdaq: BCRX), because if you got lucky you could make a ton of money in seconds. But, sometimes the same-sized move would be against you, which wasn’t so fun. So, I’m antsy with the biotechs. Amylin Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: AMLN), for whatever reason, seems to be the most well-behaved of them, for what it’s worth.