As Eyal pointed out, there was not alot going on this morning. Not that I could see, anyway. A lot of my watchlist didn’t do too much. That said, I did get VERY close to taking several trades. Usually, either lack of volume, or too wide a spread, kept me out.
I did make one scalp for 3R in GNTX. Here’s a 5-min view of what it looked like just before I got in:
Looks pretty awesome, eh? Nudged right up against 19. Has “support” from the 5EMA (heh…). Anyway, I scalped it for 3R, but it looks like a decent dummy play, to me, as well The last few 5-minute candles were of narrow range, on a pull back from the HOD, and all that jazz. But, I am not making many dummy trades…. here’s why:
After the move I scalped, it fell right back down, and never recovered. Had I traded this as a dummy trade with a 23 cent stop (to get below the preceeding 3 5-min candles), and somehow had the foresight to get out at the top, I’d have a 1R trade. Since I scalped it instead, I made 3 R. hmm… makes you think, doesn’t it?
People ask me why I take 1:1 Risk:Reward trades sometimes. The answer: because often that’s all you can get! Just because you want 2 or 3R doesn’t mean you’re going to get it. Watch the trade rate on T&S sometime… lately, trading dries up when stocks approach big numbers. Apparently, no one wants to be first to buy a stock higher, anymore. It’s frustrating when you are trying to make money off momentum. Momentum is the child of enthusiasm, and there is no enthusiasm in this market, even though it keeps drifting higher as a whole.
The one regret today: Dave (from StockTickr) pointed out a beautiful setup on NYX. Better, he pointed it out in plenty of time for me to take the same trade. I didn’t, because I didn’t like how wide the spread was. I should have compensated by putting on a 1/3 size position, or something, and piled into it as it fell. As of this writing, I’d have been up $1.50 per share on that short play. Thanks for pointing it out, anyway, dave!
No problem, Richard – looks like you made out ok today, though.
BTW, you’ve got us hooked on Jaiku. ;-) It certainly is a lot of fun.
richard: i noticed that at the top left of your chart it appears to have an abbreviation for bollinger bands and keltner channels…do u use them in your trading, and just remove them when u post the chart to make it easier to read?
@john: all those channels and extra averages and whatnot are all there to support paintbar calculations. I don’t use those directly, and leave them hidden even for my own use. What I’m showing is exactly what I look at as I trade.
I do sometimes pull up RSI and CCI and PPO, but mainly on daily charts.
richard: thanks