The hardest way to make an easy buck!
Sloppy setup
Strong stock with a nice 1 min base
Not many daytrade setups today, at least setups I could find. Was not focussed and had other things going on at the same time, so that might have been a reason.
Did find JWN and that was the only trade for today.
Very nice base near the high of the day
Often there is not that much happening on a friday in the markets. Especially if the market is very extended on a daily basis.
Today was no exception. The only trade I did was PACR and frankly I could not find much else. I had KR on my list because it held up so well and was watching POT and IPI. Only IPI had a setup but I skipped it. Would have worked, though. Not feeling bad about it, because you can never catch them all and it was a high risk environment and PACR worked out great
must come down and vice versa? NTRI was one of the top gainers in 2009 and it broke down really hard this year. After what seems to be an exhaustion gap in the beginning of march it showed up on my gainers list. I don’t know what the news was, but clearly there was a pleasant surprise. It ran up hard but finally offered a beautiful opportunity to enter. It was a pleasant surprise in a choppy market where most of the strong stock seem very extended and offer less opportunity.
Beautiful 1 min cup and handle pattern
1 min reverse head and shoulder and a 30 min dummy
Skipped HLX because it was not the first day of the move and lost 1R on HRBN, that was too extended already.
Traded two breakouts for today. The first was ARO. It had a nice daily, but was very extended intraday when I entered and I got stopped out for a loss. What was I thinking?
The other one was HRBN. It gapped up slightly to a new 20 day high and offered a great intraday pattern. Something Toni Hansen calls a D-pattern. I entered right above that pattern. Even on an otherwise boring day in the markets there are really nice breakouts during earnings season. Here is the trade…
Nice intraday pattern
Had other business to attend to so no trades today. Does not look like I missed much.
I have a love and hate relationship with PCLN. Once in a while it offers great profit, only to take it back, r by r. Today again I had a losing trade in PCLN. But I was able to compensate for it with a nice 30 min dummy setup, that worked out great.
There was not a lot of movement in the market all day. After the gap up it stayed pretty much in range.
The 30 min dummy setup was a reverse head and shoulder on the 1 min chart
I had a hard time finding nice setups today. There were a few good daily charts with intraday momentum, but I did not trust most of them so I passed.
One of them was PCLN, from my watchlist. It had a tiny 1 min bull flag after the first 10 minutes of trading but it was not ideal. Despite my doubts it ran all day.
Another one was APKT, nice 1 min base at 10:50. Passed on it too. The one I did take was PLL, a fresh gap up after a daily consolidation.
1 min base after a gap up
Two wave correction off the highs after an earnings gap
Did three trades today. Shorted PCLN early on the break of the 60 min bear flag. It moved very nice but failed to hit my first target. This was a higher risk trade because of the bullish daily chart so I set the stop at breakeven when the market seemed to bounce.PCLN could be worth watching for a long swing as it could bounce some more and resume its daily uptrend. All depending on what the market will do the coming days.
The other two trades were great winners APKT did 3.5R and DLTR 5.8R for a total of 9.3R.
Due to other commitments I missed the open and first hours of trading. By the time I got behind my computer I had missed all the fun. Momentum in the market made it clear there was not a lot of downside, while it still was too early to go long. I did scan for longs but was not prepared to enter unless the market gave a clear reversal pattern.
The nice thing about Quotetracker is the possibility to set trendline alerts. I have found no other software that can do that except freestockcharts, but while freestockcharts is great, the alerts are not great of my kind of intraday trading.
After scanning many, many charts I had set several trendline alerts on charts I thought might prove interesting but only a few triggered. Most of them I skipped for one reason or the other. I thought I was not going to put in even one trade.
The first time WSM triggered I still was waiting for the market to give a signal, though downside momentum was clearly slowing. Just at 14:00 a 5 min double bottom triggered in the SPY and WSM gave another alert as it cleared the previous swing high. I liked the 5 min Cup and Handle WSM was forming so I quickly clicked the order.
The market stayed choppy, but WSM performed great. Around 14:30 it showed a reaction, after that I updated my stop to just below the sma 20/5 at that point. I was aiming for an equal move target but just short of that target price stalled. I cheated on my stop and tightened it to just below the consolidation. I was not going to risk all the paper profit for a few extra cents. Half an hour later it it target and I sold all.
I was frustrated becuase I missed out on all the fun, but by just sticking to the routine of focussing and scanning, setting alerts and observing the market, I managed to get a great result despite that, even if only with a single trade.
It was a hard day to read the market, because it moved so little and erratically, at least to me. The market sold off from the open but there was no follow through after that first move (consisting of 2 waves down).
Instead momentum turned slowly positive and during lunch hour I found a few setups. Ended up taking DNDN (I should have passed on that one) and BIDU. DNDN was a loser, and BIDU did not meet my target but gave a nice result despite that.
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