Yes it did! I would be interested to know at what point you exited (maybe not yet). I actually got back in CRWD yesterday and then back out today when it first hit that lull around 136.50. I was happy with that. Take a look at the 2-month chart on NVDA. It may be in an upward channel too.
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Hi Andy,
Could you let me know what set up/ parameters in the Barcharts you have been using for these short duration trades…
I think I have got it set up wrong, or I just totally messed it up.
As an example, I screwed up on TSLA today, and left a lot of money on the table by selling it way too early.
Thanks,
Charlie
Hi Charlie, I left a lot of money on the table also. Let’s see what I did and you can grade it please.
In 3/28 Fas $53.18 out 3/31 $56.70 now $57.07 percentage 6.6%
In 3/29 Soxl $17.09 out 3/31 $18.00 now $18.15 9. percentage 9.89%
In 3/30 Boil $3.38 out 3/31 $3.60 now $3.65 percentage 6.5%
So as you can see Charlie I left a lot on the table to. When I got into these I wanted to Tetter Totter all of them. But Boil I made a mistake. That chart has just been dropping like crazy and I realized yesterday when I was stuck in it that I hadn’t followed my rules nor did I follow Quills rules by waiting one green before getting in. So when I got a chance I sold today.
Now Soxl is a semi conductor and Fas is financials. I decided to day to get out of them because I do not want to hold them over the weekend. With this market we could have a bunch of banks fail over the weekend and I would get slaughtered. So better safe than sorry was my thinking. So realizing all of this I have been using Quills setup on a 2 month chart pared with the DIFA and RSI, I like both of those because it does give confirmation on the TSI and Par, here it is.
I also use that on a 1 day here that is.
I followed Quill’s advice to jam it to the left till I get the first smiley face either on the red or the green. It isn’t in real time so that is a problem but by following the block trade on Schwab I feel I get an understanding of what is going on.
But Charlie, Do not, Do not follow me. I am just learning also and anything I am telling you could change next week because I am still trying to figure all this out. Boil was pure luck. I could have gotten creamed on that one because it was a weak trade. The other two, if I was Quill, I would keep riding them because they still didn’t show a sell yet. I should have rode them into the weekend but I chickened out. So I grade Boil an F, Soxl and Fas as C because I got out to early and left money on the table. But an A on all of them because over all I made 7.66 percent over 4 days. Not bad. But I need to get much, much, better.
Andy
Hi Andy,
Thanks for that…So, you did not actually day trade…You were only doing swing trading? , right?
For example, SOXL …Your buy signal was right… and I thought you were looking to ride it on the way up and day trade since you mentioned you were watching the intra-day chart right? Was there any specific indicator you were trying to glean from that.
Can you explain how you use the TSI, PAR, DIFA AND RSI for the trade buy/ sell?
I think for TSI, the green crosses and moves above the red…not sure about others.
BTW: I thinking you selling was definitely a smart move…this market can totally turn on a dime! Well done!!
Charlie
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Andy,
Take credit for your hard work and persistence. “The Market” didn’t give you those returns. You earned them.
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Lisa,
What matter’s is refining one’s own ‘process’, not an occasional, bragging-right trade done in a favorable market. Kudos to you for keeping a journal.
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Hi Charlie, right I was day trading Boil but swing trading Soxl. The problem is I became worried about the weekend so pulled everything. Probably need to get a bigger backbone.
Charlie They all work together and the way I look at it is they confirm what the candles tell you. More of a secondary indicator while the candles are primary. But the RSI, I want to buy in when that is in the oversold so then you have a better chance of making money while it swings up. (RSI starting to come out of oversold territory). If it is in overbought and the candles turn green I won’t be buying in because I think I will have a harder time making money off of it. I have noticed it is easier to get a reversion to the mean on an oversold condition, make sense?
Andy
Hey LisaM, it’s a moving target. I set my first order as a limit to buy in TOS using “1st Trgs OCO” so immediately upon the limit order hitting, I had a bracket OCO to dump if it shot the moon up 10% or slipped as a stop loss at 126.5. That was protection right out of the gate since I am not sitting around the computer all day usually.
It’s often recommended to have a target going into a trade. A common technique when dealing with retracements is to look at the prior increase anticipating a similar increase before pulling back again. In this case, there was a 13% increase measured by candle bodies and just over 17% increase using wicks. So, shooting for around 15%, around 145-149 levels. Note, we have not broken through the old gap resistance yet.
Another common technique is to use fibonacci retracement to consider targets. Below is a quick fib in TOS showing that we actually by the wick today hit 100% retracement today. A common target is the 161.8% level, the Golden Ratio, which hits at 145.29 on this chart.
While all that sounds complicated, it just takes a few minutes to get a rough target in mind and tune as it goes. So, I have set a limit order to sell 300 shares at 145.1 and am keeping a stop order that I will adjust manually. I am anticipating letting the last 200 shares run, but will decide that next week. Oh, and just to thicken the stew, I left the 200 EMA line on the chart. You can see we are rapidly approaching that and it may serve as resistance along with the previous gap and prompt a quick sell.
We will see how it all plays out. Again, stocks don’t trade in a vacuum and technology is showing strength so I’m letting it ride more. A month ago, I would have sold today to avoid any drama over the weekend. A Benjamin in the hand is worth two in the bush.
Lakedog
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Totally agree Arindam.
I have started keeping a journal, and I can see a big difference in one thing…I always felt I was shooting in the dark…and now I know that is a fact!!
I also screwed it by not getting thought process right…
1.BOIL - I got in way too early at around 4.05 a week or so back. Rationale - it was pretty close to multi year low (3.90 was the lowest)…I felt it had to go up at some time.
What went wrong - Neither was it apt on TA basis NOR was it proper entry on FA basis…Clearly, the natural gas is being taken to the cleaners at the moment…and unless i mysteriously know that the weather is suddenly going to get colder, not sure why I took the trade opposite to the market overall sentiment.
- SQQQ - Again, screwed on multiple fronts… Got in at 32.50…rationale: Clearly, the market has gone up too much, and could turn south anytime
I may be right next week…or the week after or the one after…but in that meanwhile, the market can rally a lot more (as it did in these few days) In other words, I could not have predicted (no one could have predicted).
One saving grace - as a reflexive/stupid/ impulsive action, I sold the SQQQ this morning at a 30.64 in premarket once I saw the core PCE…Looks like I saved myself a couple of hundred dollars, but that does not help the fact that I lost 400 already…and who knows, things might turn next week, and I might look stupid for having sold it today
- TSLA - well, it was not a day trade and probably not even a swing trade…I bought when it was 189, and thought I will hold it till it goes high (what is high, not sure!)…and saw it go up to 200 a couple of times before but did not sell as I felt it will go way higher…but then faltered multiple times and retraced…and so today, when it came to 198.8, I sold…and lo behold, as if the stock gods were waiting for me to do it, it just tore away from there ( seriously, it was literally at that point it just raced off the gate!!) and raced to 207…If I had held for a couple more hours, I could have made up for the loss in SQQQ and BOIL.
So, while I am very happy that I actually made a profit on TSLA, that was certainly not due to the TA/FA…Pure luck…I am just trying to figure what went wrong here…May be I shouldn’t have looked at day trading this…If swing trading, there was no reason for me to sell this today…and if day trading, I certainly had no plan on why I sold!!
Thanks Quill, Arindam, Lake dog and Andy…Have not yet turned the tide, but I can at least start making sense of why and where I am getting it wrong!
Andy,
Well, yes. Anyone who doesn’t want to stand on the tracks when they hear train coming most definitely lacks backbone. (‘scarc’, or whatever the emoji is.)
Why do some people ‘day-trade’ and what is meant by the term? That positions are exited by end of day, whether they are ITM or not, to avoid having to deal with the nasty surprises that can arise overnight. Another term for such a tactic could be ‘intra-day’ trading. But here’s a spin on that idea. If one doesn’t carry positions into the weekend, one is an ‘intra-week’ trader. On the institutional level, a very common practice is to square positions at month’s end, quarter’s end, or year’s end. All of them have this in common. They are all a means to control risk and to bank profits. So decide what you’re comfortable with, and don’t try to talk yourself into doing something you suspect you’ll regret.
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Thank you for the advice Arindam, I do appreciate it.
Andy
Charlie you and I are in the same boat trying to paddle. One thing I have observed about the products that are all 2x or 3x. You do not want to hold them if you are wrong because they are based on derivatives. If they are going against you, you can lose a lot at a very rapid clip so its best just to snip.
Andy
Working on charts and rap, both need work.
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“… but that does not help the fact that I lost 400 already…and who knows, things might turn next week, and I might look stupid for having sold it today.”
Who cares how one “looks”? If a position is put on --or taken off- according to plan, then the effectiveness of that plan can be measured. Else, one is just shooting from the hip and depending on luck.
Now for some background. The reported right/wrong ratio for a brute-force, trend-following system --including ‘Simon’ and its variants-- is about 35/65. That means that two out of three trades will fail. Therefore, two things are necessary. #1, Opening positions have to be small, and they get added to only if the market confirms the entry was correct. #2. If the trade doesn’t work right away, the odds are that it’s not going to work. Therefore, yank it and wait for another opportunity.
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Again, totally agree Arindam…That is the reason I sold all 3 …Two at a loss because I was not sure at all of my rationale for buying them in the first place…and tesla at a profit, because, well, profit is a profit.
But for me, despite the loss on those 2…I think I am getting to grips with developing the will to sell if I feel that I made a mistake…In the past, I simply used to hold despite almost being fully aware that I was wrong in buying, and that things could get lot more worse…
So, some progress for sure…and now needs more learning and tuning!
Semantics and technicalities. NVDA is certainly in an uptrend. I always learned, however, that channels are actually two parallel lines. There is clearly “slop” in exactly how parallel those lines are, but using Stockcharts.com, when you draw a trendline connecting either wick tops or candle body tops, you use ctrl-D and it generates another parallel line of the same slope. You can easily drag that to the other side to see if it matches up to form a channel. It’s pretty darn close, but I would be concerned that it’s not going to behave as if it’s in that channel exactly. That doesn’t mean it’s bad, it just means if I’m waiting for it to hit the lower trendline to buy, I might get left behind. It might also drop and follow the pattern. It depends a lot on what pattern or trade strategy you are playing for.
Interestingly, it looked a lot like it might be following Bollinger Bands and indeed, is riding in the upper band. Just FYI.
Happy hunting,
Lakedog
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Charlie,
There’s a saying going around the 'net that goes like this. " It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they’ve been fooled." Why? Because none of likes to admit we’re wrong. Why? Because 12 or more years in the gov’t indoctrination camps of being punished with grades of ‘D’ and ‘F’ for “mistakes” and being rewarded with 'A’s and 'B’s for being “right” makes us twice shy about ever making mistakes about anything ever again. So here’s a saying you can put on your icebox. “Make a new mistake today.”
Seriously, there are two reasons for taking an immediate loss when a trade isn’t working. #1, it prevents even further damage. #2, it clears the head and gets rid of the stress of not being able to do something about which one has little control, such as where prices are headed next. Up? Down? Who knows? But when the tape isn’t doing what you were expecting it to do, the prudent thing is to retreat. Soon enough things will settle down and a re-entry could be tried.
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