Tuesday, June 03, 2008

Short Trades - LEH, OXY, VLO

As I mentioned last night, LEH closed weak yesterday and could offer a carryover trade. That's exactly what happened. The first 15 min. bar was a wide, red hanging man. Just pick a spot. Also a second trade presented itself when the markets sold off.

OXY and VLO executed at the same time. OXY had the better setup because the 50 SMA was taken out on the BO. VLO paused when it hit the 50, losing some momentum. VLO observed support, OXY didn't -very weak - closed on its lows on a capitulation-like volume spike.


I missed the HCPG pick POT. Couldn't really find a spot at $210.00 and then missed the setup at $211.00. Some of my longs were lazy and sluggish - CTSH, and HUM. Although the market took out the declining 50 SMA early in the day, it had no follow through. It couldn't notch a higher high, and eventually came back to the 50. At that point it was time to look for low risk shorts as the market consolidated before breaking down.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jamie,

Nice call (last night) on LEH. An alternative trade setup was the 30m IB following the retracement to the 30m ORL. It had a risk of about $0.40 and lined up with initial weakness in the overall market. You did a better job of exiting. I mistook the first flush below 30.50 as capitulation - mainly based on action in the Q's.

TJ said...

Thanks Jim,

Yeah, a more aggressive entry. I also saw some NRBs on the 15 min., but waited until support was taken out. I thought that the morning swing low might hold as support but it didn't.