At the request of reader Quentin, here is today’s chart for UltraShort QQQ ProShares (AMEX: QID). It was a low-volume day, so not many bars….

Once again, we see how blindly exiting on the first bar where the volume pressure changes color can leave a lot of money on the table. Still, it’s been very reliable, across all the stocks I’ve featured so far. I’m trying to be very mechanical about these examples.

Today, we have 3 trades for a gain of 49 cents/share on QID.

I think it’s great fun to show how just a couple eotpro indicators can work together to provide a nice robust manner of trading.

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

I traded my first swing trade today after the daytrade moratorium, in UltraShort QQQ ProShares (ETF) (AMEX: QID). I entered based on the 6% drop in the Chinese stock markets last night. I entered in the first 15 minutes, and the markets reversed and marched on upward. I finally got stopped out today after the FOMC minutes were released, so I ended up daytrading after all. Another -1R down the hole. End of “swing” trade.

Worse than yet another loss is the psychological capital I keep losing. I have no confidence in my trading abilities anymore. Even my long term 401k holdings are suffering. I’ve got them all in bonds since February this year, and I’m flat for the year instead of up 9% like the rest of my market-ignorant coworkers. Four years studying markets and two years trading, and I can’t even outperform them. Pretty pathetic. I’m really struggling with whether I should keep trying or just admit my failure and save the rest of my money. I’ve always had confidence in myself that I could accomplish the goals I set for myself, but I’m not so sure about this one. I’m so far out of touch with the markets it seems. I “know” so much, but maybe I’m one of those people that knows a lot but can’t trade.

Anyway, hope everybody caught some of the upswing today.

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

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

Richard’s been posting a lot of PnF charts lately, and I saw a setup in QID today, though I didn’t trade it:

One thing PnF charts are really good at is filtering out noise at support and resistance zones. There was a pivot point resistance zone near $47.80-$47.90 that was very wide on a candle chart, but clearly shown on the PnF. The trade would have been good for about 3R. I’m also experimenting with putting volume by price along with pressure bars on the PnF. The volume by price shows how much volume occurred at a specific price level, identifying potential support / resistance. The pressure shows the net shares at bid or ask during a PnF column. I don’t have any conclusions yet, but there it is if anyone is interested.

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

I was watching the wrong stocks today. They had high relative volume, and were setting up to break out. But, the trade rate was slow, and they were acting choppy. If you look closely, you can see that all their big volume was at the open, and they had cooled way off. So, I saw this, but I just kept watching them. I was obviously not thinking clearly!

Even when I added more stocks to my lists, I still kept watching the original set that went nowhere. I should have just taken them off my screens altogether.

Now, that’s not to say my watchlist didn’t perform well, on paper. There were a few breakouts, but they happened in such an unusual fashion that I couldn’t get into them like I would like to. In particular CAKE made me mad. It leaned against its number for a long time, then somehow popped over it in a single 2000 share trade. That seemed exactly like a bull trap, where the ask disappears and then comes back on strong. But, buyers stepped in and ran it up, instead. Frustrating!

Then at the end of the day I had a Brilliant Idea(TM), which would have made for an impulse trade. But, it didn’t pan out, either. I thought, even if the Fed news sounds good, it probably wouldn’t be able to push the markets even higher. You know, when a stock is overextended, they look for any excuse to sell it some, even if it’s good news. Any event would do. So, I looked for a knee-jerk push up in the QID (double-stuffed inverse QQQQ). But, it didn’t happen, so I went to sleep.

I seem to do best in flat markets. Big up days have never been my paydays.

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

Finally a win for me! I thought that the market would move after the Fed Minutes were released today, and as Richard has suggested many times, I decided to play the move by trading the UltraShort QQQ ProShares (ETF) (AMEX: QID). I thought that the move would be to the downside, so I went long QID since it’s an inverse ETF.

As things broke down, I jumped in (I was a bit late to the party). My entry is the yellow line, my target the green line, my initial stop the red line:

It actually traded to my stop two different times, but Zecco didn’t stop me out. Thank goodness!

I watched this chart of QQQQ to gauge my exit:

Here’s the detail:

I ended up taking 1R as the move died out and a hammer printed on the Q’s. I’m just happy not to have lost! I admit I was a bit lucky, but I’m a bit overdue for some good luck…

Trade Summary:

QID Long 80 Shares
Entry: $52.53, Stop: $52.35, Target: $53.00
R: $14.40, Exit: $52.72
P/L: 1.06R, or $15.20

Trade Grade:

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

meh… not a very eventful day. It’s basically covered on twitter…

• I saw GSIC, but passed on it because I didn’t think the 5MA was close enough to it after the 3rd 15min bar. But, that fourth bar shot up so much that it caught the 5MA up to it by the end, which makes me look dumb after the fact. Oh well! Eyal got it, but implied that he sold parts of his position well before the end of the move.

• I was actually going to short GSIC when it finally broke its upward trendline, but by then we were getting close to Fed time, so I didn’t.

• I looked for stocks near their OR highs just before 2:15, and settled on STLD to trade, if the markets went up. I grabbed 1.08 R on it, but at least one big seller was using the move to dump shares (which was smart of them), and made things pretty erratic. DHI and other depressed stocks had much nicer moves, but I naturally avoid bottom-feeding so I missed them.

• I forgot again to just trade QLD and QID and be done with it. I would have made more money than I made off STLD, going that route, without any of the stock selection hassle. I have mentally categorized QQQQ as not worth trading, because its range as % of its price is usually not great compared to faster-moving stocks. But, in market-moving situations, it and QID/QLD are actually a pretty decent choice.

As usual, I’ll only be trading part of Thursday, if at all, due to my super-exciting action-packed social life.