I had no watch list today, so I was stuck with the usual suspects. After a series of lower highs, I decided to go with the flow and short AKAM. As you can see from the chart, once it broke support, it formed a steep curve on an uptick in volume and had an orderly fall all the way to $37. 00. Good for 1+ pts.
Friday, August 11, 2006
Trade of the Day - Akamai Technologies Inc. NASDAQ (AKAM)
I had no watch list today, so I was stuck with the usual suspects. After a series of lower highs, I decided to go with the flow and short AKAM. As you can see from the chart, once it broke support, it formed a steep curve on an uptick in volume and had an orderly fall all the way to $37. 00. Good for 1+ pts.
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10 comments:
So, why don't you do this full time? You have much better discipline than I do. Compared to you, my gains are mostly from dumb luck. :)
Don't sell yourslf short, you sound very street smart to me.
Trading full-time is my ultimate goal but I still haven't reached the level of capital I need. Plus, if I stay out of the job market too long, I risk becoming obsolete. Under the current market conditions, I'm happy to be working and trading on the side. Maybe in the fall, the markets will get more interesting... :)
When the market re-opened on 9/17/01 after 9/11 I bought three stocks: AKAM ($3.23), PALM ($2.99) & ERICY ($4.15).
Thank heavens for AKAM which I recently sold.
http://millionairenowbook.blogspot.com/
>> Don't sell yourslf short, you sound very street smart to me.
Well, I realized that the market is all about manipulation and many of the brokers/analysts are unethical and just out to make money for themselves. If that's what you mean. I see making money in the market being based on where the MM's what to take the stock, not really what the company is doing. Some stock being more manipulated than others.
>> Trading full-time is my ultimate goal but I still haven't reached the level of capital I need.
I would think that you wouldn't need that much to start doing this full time. With your skills and a daytrading account with 30-40k to get started, you could make that grow pretty quickly.
>> Plus, if I stay out of the job market too long, I risk becoming obsolete.
I hear ya. I'm an IT manager/developer and if I were to leave my field for an exteneded period of time, it would be pretty difficult for me to get back in at the level where I left.
>> Maybe in the fall, the markets will get more interesting.
What are you expecting this fall? Economic indicators have been rather conflicting between slowdown and no slowdown. If commodity prices continue to rise and housing market continues to fall, things could get bad. Perhaps new short term market lows in October?
Oh, one other thing, do you consider short term stock trading gambling? If so, do you have reservations about leaving your "legit" job and gambling for a living even though it could be much more profitable? I have thought about this before and am a bit conflicted about the issue.
Jamie,
If you publish the trades of your day in real time, you could also supplement your trading income with subscriptions to your stock picking service.
CNS
Hey monkeydust,
When I do the math, I come up with a much bigger capital requirement than you do. I know that NASDAQ day traders can trade four times their capital base, but I never trade on margin. And that probably answers one of your other questions about gambling. I don't consider my trading as gambling because I try to stick to a strict set of rules
Also look at the type of market we are in. I was looking at my blog archives for the month of March and the trades were much bigger and faster. Now that we have been a bear market for a few months, many of the stocks I was trading in March and April are trading almost 50% cheaper. The further we go into the bear market without a sizable technical bounce, the harder it is to make money because the average move is cut in half.
Then you have to consider how many really good trading days there are in a month. There are usually only about 3-4 wide range bars. And also consider how many days are not really tradable - options expiration, Fed speak, Friday afternoons are usually dead, the day before and after a holiday, etc...
I count on approx. 10-12 good tradable days and then calculate how much I need to make on average per day to meet my objective. I cut my share size in half when we fall into a bearish environment like we are in now because its much harder for me to find good trade setups. So right now, I'm not meeting my monetary trading objectives even though I feel my trading, for the most part, is good.
I'm hoping October will bring a real technical bounce which we haven't had since the bears took over. By that I mean a successful break of the NASDAQ 50 MA and a run for the 200 on the daily timeframe.
Hey CNS and Glenn,
Thanks for the vote of confidence. Right now it's impossible for me to do because I'm trading solo and the first 30 minutes after entry is when I really need to manage my trades.
Hi larry,
Great blog, lots of info. Thanks. I'm adding it to my blog roll.
LOL. And, I will add yours right now...
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