Zoomie wishes he didn’t trade the Fed day… 2 losses.

One was on C.H. Robinson Worldwide (Nasdaq: CHRW), a stock I was lamenting didn’t end up going anywhere, though I was watching it. I know others were as well, so there’s no doubt this was an alluring stock this morning. Zoomie bit on it, and was bitten in return:

Second was Gerdau S.A. (NYSE: GGB):

Stocks Mentioned In This Article
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CHRW	| |
GGB	| |

The stocks I was watching acted kind of disappointing today. They kinda ran up and did nothing. Here are two examples…. C. H. Robinson Worldwide Inc (Nasdaq: CHRW):

… and T. Row Price (Nasdaq: TROW):

I was very close to biting on Pacific Sunwear (Nasdaq: PSUN) on the break of 21, but I waited long enough to see that it went to 21.01 and turned around. I should have shorted it…

My One Trade
Even seeing that new highs weren’t on the menu for my stocks, Crocs Inc (Nasdaq: CROX) painted a pretty picture just under 45. I thought it had good chances of popping through, after the enthusiastic vertical move it had made an hour before. So, I scalped the move: in at 45.00, out at 45.15. The 10-minute chart below makes me look like a genius, since it promptly fell down a few seconds later. Again, I ask myself why I didn’t short it…

… but I’m happy to take a 0.5R gain on the first trading day of the year. Always nice to start in the green!

Victory for the News Traders
Just now, the FOMC minutes came out, and the markets made a dramatic move. I had stopped trading for the day, and didn’t even see the initial drop since I was writing this post. I don’t know what they said, but Mr. Market sure didn’t seem to like it! This must be a good day for news-based traders! (I hope everyone with long positions had good stops in place!)

Stocks Mentioned In This Article
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CHRW	| |
TROW	| |
PSUN	| |
CROX	| |

The losing trade on C.H. Robinson Worldwide, Inc. (Nasdaq: CHRW). This may be the longest I’ve held a stock in my daytrading career! The chart:

Reasons I think this was a decent trade:

• Markets opened down, and kept going down all morning
• This was the only short candidate that looked clean to me on the daily charts. Many many other stocks were going down, but they were going down right into support areas.
• Even when the markets turned up around 11:30 or noon, CHRW stayed down. Many other stocks I might have shorted would have chopped me right out.
• I stuck with my plan to hold out for larger gains. I gave up at least four chances for 0.3R, and two chances for 0.6R. Something was holding the stock up to 42, and it seemed like I had reasonable chances that they would run out of ammo at the end of the day. I checked, and there were no options on CHRW with a 42 strike, on the extremely off chance that there was early pinning action on this of all stocks!

Clearly there was support at 42 (I was laughing all day about the Plunge Protection Team or whatever it’s called!). But, since it was underperforming the rest of the market all afternoon, it seemed premature to give up. Trading in such a tight range all day, I thought it would either run up, or sell off at the close. So, I tightened my stop and let the chips fall where they may. Turns out, it did both. Too bad it ran up first! :-) Took me out for a 0.48 R loss.

So, let’s talk about my stop. Had I left my stop alone, I wouldn’t have been stopped out, and could have closed for a small profit at the end of the day. As time wore on, though, I decided to tighten up on it, since it hadn’t pushed past 42.04 for hours. I moved it to 42.15. I don’t know if this was a bad decision or not. I felt like a move past 42.15 would severely invalidate my assumption that support at 42 would give way. I think I did right, and was a victim of end-of-day chop.

Stocks Mentioned In This Article
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CHRW	| |