Terrible Morning + Good Afternoon = Crappy Day

This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com

I was down big in a hurry this morning as I tried to scalp a top in NVDA 4 times. That was incredibly dumb. Two times should be enough to teach me a lesson, but four? I also had some bad luck with dummy longs in NVDA and EXM that gave me more losses. So I was down -4.5% going into the afternoon. I pulled out of a long trade in RIMM at my entry point, that reversed to the tick and went profitably on without me.

I finally got my act together and traded well in the afternoon. Here’s two good trades, one a win in YHOO that Zoomie traded along with me (though his entry may have been different):

I saw the base just under $24, and bought at $24.01 with a tight stop. YHOO stalled a bit and retraced to my entry, so I took off half the position there. That was the right thing for me to do, but not the most profitable it turns out. We had another scary moment in the afternoon, but we went on to almost hit 24.50, and I got out at 24.45 for a 2% gain. This put me back to -2.5% on the day, which helped my psyche very much. :)

I also tried a parabolic short scalp in ICON. Look at the 5 min chart:

Now THAT’s parabolic!! The only trouble is that there wasn’t much potential due to the steadiness of the rise. If it were a sharper break to the upside it would have offered more, but the target was only about $0.30 or so. I tried it anyway, and I played it well, even though I got out at a small loss. I’m happy with how I scaled in, and there just weren’t any sellers at $22.02 when it was ready to break, so it didn’t. I thought about trying to smash the bid by sending a few hundred shares short at market, but I’m not Livermore and they probably would have absorbed my shares and turned it right around as it did anyway. I still wonder what might have happened, though, as the liquidity totally dried up…

Here’s my trade:

So another down day, and I’m within about $65 of my initial funding level, having been up 30% back on that fateful day. I hope to do better tomorrow. :(

This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com