Odd,
ignore the timestamps on the posts - they're an hour out! (I closed my HON short 22 pts up... it passed 36.80 and bottomed at 36.60, I exited at 36.71 once I was convinced the direction had changed. (Better traders than I would have had far more of it than I did, for one thing I was answering email when it bottomed and was a bit slow off the mark! <idiot> I usually manage to watch trades much more closely but life keeps intruding and today it cost me a few points) .
That 1 hour timestamp error makes me look positively psychic, doesn't it?
SB company now closed - COMPQ at 1965.27, INDU 10344.83. INDU went downhill from 19:10 as I suggested, as did COMPQ. DIS closing at 26.91. I only traded HON, almost all the shorts went downhill, WMT climbed to the last bar and then tanked with the rest - I didn't feel tempted by it as trading a long as it's seldom a good idea to trade opposite to the market and I'd already decided that was heading south. Reversals not readily apparent today for the last part. Still, all told it's been a good week - 7 bets, 5 winners, although 2 of them didn't amount to much. The biggest niggle to me is that you start an SB off several points down - DIS is usually something around 8 pts adrift at entry, so to make 15 pts I have to trade a 23 pt move, the alternative is to whack $25k down and pay $1 commission on 1000 shares.... bit of a big step while you're still not sure you are right often enough, isn't it? <g>
Nothing clever in this - very simple trend spotting I guess, the Nasdaq low is on the last bar at 1965.14, it fell half as far as I thought it might, but I didn't expect it to oscillate 1966-1968 or so for 2 hours <g> INDU crashed nicely within minutes of deciding that was the high for the day.
I didn't estimate a target for INDU so I guess I'll just settle for 'no higher than the high so far' which would be a conservative appreciation in hindsight... I trade stocks, not indices, and I'm happy with my 22pts for 31 minutes trading, even if the INDU dropped .
Anyhow - I called (by my reckoning) 3 shorts today - INDU, COMPQ, HON, all 3 dropped nicely - not overly miles off yesterday either... and that's just based on a few seconds glance at a candle chart... I run esignal, onscreen I have a 10 min and a 1 day chart for a stock, and 10 min and 1 day charts for the INDU and COMPQ. I have a summary window with my 'universe' of interesting daily rolling US SB's in. The charts have candles showing price and volume, the only other thing on the charts is a sort of candlestick pattern recognition EFS I programmed - which frankly I usually ignore.... I'm using P&V almost exclusively.
(This may sound like I don't use my own programming efforts for those who know me - not so, but I like to combine good ideas from a variety of areas and recognised my candle/barchart skills weren't great, and I only traded EoD.... so I'm trying to improve both).
Dave
