This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com
I went long Omniture, Inc. (NASDAQ: OMTR) on the close Thursday 1/11. It was one of Richard’s New High Scan candidates. I bought 10 shares at $14.94, which is a tiny position for me, but it had to be for the distance of my stop (@ $13.28). My stop was probably overly conservative, and I blame my daytrader-trying-to-swing trade mentality. My R was roughly $16. I closed the trade out today because price was bumping into the $16 resistance, and it didn’t look really strong to me, with lower highs and low volume on the intraday chart:
Daily Chart
Intraday Chart
Historically, I would have moved my stop up to about $15.70 at around 11:00 am, and waited to see what would happen. This kind of play would usually turn down and stop me out with a very small profit. I decided to take the 0.58R that fate gave me and call it a trade. I guess the next day or two will show if my read was correct. Here’s the tick chart, showing the weakness I was perceiving (I am an eNfP):
Over the last few years of watching stocks, I’ve found that prices almost never just take off, blasting through resistances and round numbers never to return, nor do they frequently fall down through the floor in a panic and lie stone dead. It seems like they do at first glance, because the few that do are given such notoriety, and newbies like me think that this is the way that prices act in general, day in and day out. So then you buy and wait for the endless rocket up to the moon, and at the first pullback, you think that you were wrong and sell. Of course you should sell if you actually were wrong, and that’s the intent of a real stop. But if I had sold on Friday at $15.20, I would have missed out on the profits today. Choose a timeframe, choose an entry, a stop and a target, and then execute! I didn’t have a target, so I bailed in a period of strength rather than weakness, which is a departure from my past style, but I think a move for the better.
Any comments are welcome!
Looks like I came within $0.20 or so from the top. “Great, kid! Don’t get cocky.”
Where is that line from? I can hear it in my head, but I can’t place it… some movie.
Clue: http://www.tri-sport.com/merchant/1058/images/site/Han%20Solo%20-%20Danny%20sm.jpg
Unless my sarcasm detector is faulty, in which case :-P
My favorite was the big daddy GrandMaster Jedi:
“hmmmmm…..? Do or do not, there is no try.”
Not sure how they got Grover to fit into such a small suit though…..
nope, no sarcasm, just faulty memory on my end.