I almost didn’t trade today (was only watching the markets in the late afternoon), but I did find a tiny last-minute scalp to take. It was a winner, but not much of one.

In the video, I talk a bit about the way this scalp set up, and how I chose my entry. This illustrates an important concept of very short-term market dynamics, that is also a big part of my scalping edge. Hopefully this helps people time their entries better if they are wanting to give scalping a try.

The trade was on American Airlines (NYSE: AMR). I noticed that airlines in general were doing good volume today, so I decided to focus on them with the time I had left.

Stocks Mentioned In This Article
Stock	Links
AMR	| |

Watch this post's video on Youtube

Here’s the 3-minute view of my trades today, on AMR, CCJ, UCTT, BTU, STLD, and AKS. Five winners and one loser. I try to describe what I saw, and how it played out, and still keep the video under 10 minutes.

In all cases, I was tracking the daily and intraday context via point-and-figure charts (as described in my previous post)… but I couldn’t show you all of that because of time constraints. And, you would probably all be bored to death.

I configured the video codec to make a much smaller file, which was nice, but it left noticeable blocky artifacts when my mouse moved on-screen. So, I’ll alter it again for the next video so the quality is a little better.

You can read about these trades and comment on them as they are happening on my #daytraders channel on jaiku. I usually don’t post them in time for you to also take them–usually I have to get in shortly after I spot them–, but sometimes there is time for me to mention them early.

Watch this post's video on Youtube

Just in case Zoomie didn’t start outperforming me today, I decided to erase all my gains for the week. I am such a humanitarian. If only I could eat humanitarian awards, and burn their packaging to keep my apartment warm… :-) Okay, that was over-dramatic…

Anyway, since we had several waves of big negative $TICK’s, and several stocks hovering around their lows, I found 6 trades I wanted to make. I made 4 of them, and managed to take small losses on each. All 6 would have broken even at best, the way I would have managed the trades. Wherever the stocks were that knew how to break out of their opening range, I wasn’t watching them today!

To top it off, the first trade I made today was by accident! I sent the order when I only meant to fill it out. Still, it wasn’t a terrible entry, and I thought I had a good chance of making a profit. Wrong! So, my first two trades of the day (1 intentional, 1 unintentional) were on Occidental Petroleum Corporation (NYSE: OXY):

(all these are going to be 10-min charts, by the way)

Here’s two false starts from American Airlines (NYSE: AMR):

NYSE not treating me well.. how ’bout nasdaq? BAIDU (Nasdaq: BIDU):

or maybe Broadcom (Nasdaq: BRCM)?

fine… how about nVidia (Nasdaq: NVDA)?

To be fair, NVDA acted better than anything else I’ve shown so far, but it still moved back through the entry after the trade had been open 70 minutes… not exactly what you want to see…

Well, I’ve tried oil, airlines, tech, chinese tech… how bout some gold trust (NYSE: GLD)?

Summary
You won’t find me saying any day is bad. I have an amazing life even when I’m bleeding cash. But today was certainly not profitable. It’s not as bad as I might have made it sound, though… I liked the trades I made… and I haven’t totalled it up yet, but I lost a little over 1R across 4 losing trades, which isn’t bad at all. Just one good trade will cancel out all of these.

[EDIT: okay, StockTickr says it totals to 1.07R I lost today. Not a big deal... just a lot of trades with no profit to show for it...]

Stocks Mentioned In This Article
Stock	Links
OXY	| |
AMR	| |
BIDU	| |
BRCM	| |
NVDA	| |
GLD	| |

Groundhog Day for Zoomie, who took two trades for two losses again today. He’s off to a slow start, but I’m sure Zoomie will be crushing me (as usual) in no time. He wins about 25%, but his winners are huge compared to his losers… that’s how you win this game!

The trades were in Witness Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: WITS):

(note that the image should say -0.68, instead of 0.68, I think)

… and American Airlines (NYSE: AMR):

Stocks Mentioned In This Article
Stock	Links
WITS	| |
AMR	| |

The second trade of the day was in AMR Corporation (NYSE: AMR). This stock is primarily American Airlines, and for two days now, airlines are hot hot hot. I had missed the entry I wanted into Continental Airlines (NYSE: CAL), due to a mid-day nap. (I stayed up too late last night!) I was trying to wait for AMR to make new highs for the day, since that would coincide pretty well with my watchlist price, but it was trading in a narrow range, and I bought the break.

As with my other trade for the day, the break I bought did not have impressive follow-through. It just meandered around my entry price, within 5 cents either direction. Boring, to say the least. It eventually made a small push in my favor, for about 11 cents. It picked an interesting time to do it, too. I was seeing sell-offs here and there via the TICKs, and the $XAL airlines sector was now significantly off its highs. There are two schools of thought when that happens. First off, you could say “Wow, look at how well this stock has held up during the selloffs. Look at how strong it is relative to its sector.” Or, you could say “Any second now the enthusiasm on AMR is going to wither away, and it will snap back to its place with the rest of the markets.” I try to decide which camp I’m in based on whether there’s any special volume, or positive news on the stock to set it apart. In this case, there was neither, so I took my 11 cents as a gift, and got out.

Here’s the chart, with an unfortunate bad tick making it a little hard to read (click to enlarge):

In this case, my exit was close to the highest the price would get for the rest of the day. So, I can’t complain at all! I got filled for some of my shares at 24.80, and I don’t think it got higher than 24.81 for the time frame I was watching it. My average exit was 24.778ish, for a 0.4R profit.

So, two trades, two wins, on a kind of tough day if you ask me. Lots of good looking short options were dangling in front of me all day, but the markets kept drifting up all day. It was hard to resist them!

Stocks Mentioned In This Article
Stock	Links
AMR	| |
CAL	| |

Well, it’s Tuesday, and I’m dead even for the week. Two trades: one win, one loss, for a total of 0 R. I am not finding this week’s market action very favorable for my type of trading. Volume is too low, and I am once again fretting about sudden market turns.

Monday, the trade was on AMR Corporation (NYSE: AMR). It was a short play. It stopped me out without even thinking too hard about going my way. I should have set my stop a little higher, to get over those morning wicks (not that it would have saved me). I’m okay with my choice of entry, but not entirely thrilled. Overall, I give this trade a “D”.

Today, I noticed Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NYSE: AMD) early on via the TradeIdeas scanner. I got in long, and in hindsight jumped out a few minutes too soon. I was watching the trade, instead of walking away. I knew 24.76 was an important level from a couple days ago. I gave it like 4 tries to push through, and it kept bouncing off. 24.70 was my 1 R point, so I decided it was prudent to take my 1 R. For your amusement, I’m posting the chart that makes me look dumbest (StockTickr makes several available to me automatically)… I got out right at the bottom of a very green candle:

Had I walked away, I probably would have picked 24.90 as my target, and would have made a little more. Until after labor day, though, I may put my “ride your winners” hat in the closet. We need some volume, and a clear market direction!

A few of my watchlist trades have hit their prices, but always in the last hour of trading. As a general rule, I don’t enter trades in the last hour. I’m looking at whether I shouldn’t reconsider, though. My rationale for staying out is that the last hour is choppy. But, lately, all day feels pretty choppy…. hmmm….

Stocks Mentioned In This Article
Stock	Links
AMR	| |
AMD	| |