Refiners have been hit hard this week. I love stocks that just keep on giving. I traded VLO three days this week and it delivered nicely on all three.NRIB at the lower end of the preceding wide range, red bar at the cusp of S2. Exit after 3 WRBs.
Cont'd
Similar setup on ESRX, except this one needed more time to consolidate after the BO. It was worth the wait when price eventually reached my target.On the daily chart we see how it attempted to BO yesterday, although it was quite a lame attempt. As soon as it took out yesterday's low, it was ripe for shorting on the failed daily triangle pattern. It took out the pivots at the center of the triangle and closed on the lower slope. Sweet!
DRYS setup a good looking bear flag pattern. I fell in love with the pattern and didn't pay attention to price. Had I noticed the proximity of the round number $90.00, I would have moved on to something else. But since I was already committed, by the time I noticed we were about to hit $90.00, I partialed out and was stopped on the balance. I had to try a second time when price was rejected at the down sloping 20 EMA. It started out well, but then we ran into a series of offsets. I finally decided to bail half way up the WR green bar.
JOYG looked bullish despite the market sell-off and I placed a buy stop order at $89.52 for the C&H BO. My order was never triggered and eventually JOYG retraced towards the lower end of the cup. It tried to move higher, but it immediately reversed (head fake). I took advantage of the late day weakness, to scalp it into the close.
8 comments:
Jamie,
Great trades as usual. On stocks like VLO, do you ever swing trade those, or hold part of your trade overnight?
Alan
Thanks Alan,
Yes, I sometimes hold a partial overnight when stocks close near high/low of the day. I'm being extra cautious at the moment, because of the divergence between the markets - NAZ strength vs. DOW and S&P weakness. When the markets are in sync, I am more likely to hold partial overnight.
Awesome trading Thursday and Friday!
A question on your ESRX trade. In the 15min chart the entry bar's low is 71.74 and the high is 71.93. I guess you trade order executed around 71.70/71.72. So when I look at the 11:18am bar in the 3min chart, I see a solid green bar that closes at its high, which is at 71.77 and above S2.
What is your thinking at that point? Do you get concerned? Do you prepare to close the position with a Market Order? Do you feel that the low volume of that bar does not make it a real threat to the trade?
I am asking this because keeping my looses very small is a priority on my trading. And it is a very interesting judgment call to know when one is letting a winning position turn into a loosing one, and when one is allowing price to retest significant areas.
Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance!
anarco
Thanks Anarco,
It has lot to do with Trader Psychology. I had a big winner in the can. And the mood of the market was also very bearish, so I was pretty sure that the markets would close on their lows.
I certainly don't like it when price stalls shortly after the BO. If we exclude my particular trader psychology yesterday and think in terms of trading to win vs. trading not to lose, it puts a whole different perspective on how we manage our positions.
Trading to win would imply leaving the initial stop in place with confidence until price makes a big move in your favor or gets stopped out.
Trading not to lose we manage the stop on the basis of price. We give the trade a chance to get going and then after each new low we tighten the stop. In the case of ESRX 15 min., the 11:30 bar printed a lower low so we tighten stop a few pennies above previous bar high. At 12:00 ESRX prints lower low, so we tighten stop to previous bar high, and so on and so forth. Micro managing to avoid a loss. But if you are really not comfortable with the trade, you should take some money off after a small profit like I did with DRYS. Then it becomes less of problem, and you can focus on finding a better setup elsewhere.
In my case I was confident with the ESRX setup because each move to S2 printed a lower high so the trend was intact.
Hope this is helpful.
The concepts of trading to win and trading not to loose are new to me, but in reading your post they already ring true.
I put a lot of emphasis on my trader psychology so I am sure these concepts will make their way into my daily trading.
You response is very helpful Jamie. I truly appreciate it :-)
Welcome Anarco
Good Trading!
Jamie, You are the best. Without reading your page every night my day doesnt get over. You have made my trading retrun twice than what I used to have. You are my guru.
Again, huge appreciation for the work you do so that small trader like me can outperform big money manager's return.
Shah
Thanks for the kind words Shah!
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