Nice to see a bounceback rally today as anticipated! Waiting for earlier swing longs to post green gains, to sell into rally continuation days. One of the things that bugs me most about the markets, even with all the experience I've had, is their power to still make me feel bad on red/down days, and the power to make me feel great on up days... I'd prefer to be able to stay level headed "no matter what", but the overall market sentiment still has sway over how I feel about things... eg 3-5 day rallies and I'm on top of the world, 3-5 day selloffs and I feel like things are temporarily 'down in the dumps'. Anyone else? Interesting points.

-k

Market's up nicely this morning, a continuation up from Friday's gains, despite what the financial sites were saying about doom and gloom over the weekend... a great reminder to follow the charts, and patterns w/technical entry/exit criteria and largely ignore the media. The charts are what matters. CAT down, glad I didn't buy (a talking head guy had kept recommending CAT these last few weeks, glad I ignored that, too... "booyah this").

Remember the 5-6 day COMPQ cycles, we'll see if this is a buyer's week ahead.


-ken

Looks like buyers are finally starting to come back into the market; what's somewhat surprising is that for the first time in many years there was no upside "January effect", eg buying small/mid-caps for window dressing by portfolio managers; the economic situation outweighed that.

At some point during 1Q 2009 however, eg during this next 6-8 weeks, I'd expect to see some sectors start to regain buyers, because we've always historically had rally market weeks during Jan-March during the early part of each year. Should be interesting to see how it all works out!

-Ken

Still not trading these last few weeks, getting ready for my featured presentation on Tape Reading at the Traders' Expo - New York this weekend!

Still holding all my position trades here; waiting for a market recovery - somewhat impatiently. Not stopping out here; if I had more capital to allocate I'd be buying up more stock here, as I'm sure it'll all do fine, (except for bankruptcies like CC!), for position trades.

Position trade update: Holding steady in long term position trades, stocks like SIRI ZLC BGP in the green, waiting for MGM/LVS to potentially bounce in the months ahead; still bullish oil stocks here.

Intraday: looking for new trade setups, one tip is to see how many gaps there are in the premarket as a leading indicator for volatility, plus futures ($QMI/spoos) as usual.

-ken

My ZLC SIRI BGP are back in the green, up nicely, likely to start scaling out of ZLC if it loses the 4, SIRI is up, MGM/LVS also moving strongly in recent days, looking forward to seeing if these finally get upwards momentum. Still holding long all my positions (glad I did).

Winners today, exited most of my swing/position entries in SIRI/ZLC/BGP/S today:

IB:
SIRI buy 6000 .15 sell 6000 .35
ZLC buy 2000 3.8 sell 2000 4.55
BGP buy 2000 .76 sell 2000 .90

fidelity:
ZLC buy 1000 3.12 sell 1000 4.52
S buy 300 2.60 s 300 4.30

Here's a screencap PROOF of my P&L so far today from my IB acct:



I'm up over $3K net total today, including both that IB plus the winning exits in the ZLC/S in my Fidelity account.
Took a *lot* longer than I'd wanted to wait to get a recovery in ZLC/BGP (8 wks!), but patience pays, albeit modestly.

Still in 1k shares BGP and 400 ZLC in my IB sep acct, and 250 shares ZLC in the fidelity account.

WATCHLIST: SRZ PIR bought sm shares
Bought just 40shares MGM here at the 4.54 *risky because almost shooting star pattern on daily candles on Apr 6th; using prior
days low as support, next buy trigger if it clears the 5 on volume; s1=3.5, s2 = 2.0, r1=5.6, r2 = 6.6 today April 7th
I want to add to MGM position on volume bounce for position trade, waiting for best time.

1:49pm Did a 'test short' just 20 shares WLP at 39.87, will cover stop out if it regains 40.05,
2:08 covered 39.62 for +.25 (testing out new tape reading signal, looks like it worked; note I like to
test new signals on small share trades, to validate with real trades, before scaling up).

3:12 added 800 MGM at 4.55 here to fidelity/position account

April 8th: I took 2 small stops (<$80 each) trying to buy 200-share bounces in ZLC, neither one worked out. Also bought 900 shares BGP at just over $1 for the Fidelity account, good recent move up, though big picture, like many of these bottom-fishers, there's always a risk of BK/bankruptcy. We'll see.

April 9, 2009

Gap up in TXT looks interesting, and breakouts in JWN WFC

Tried shorts in JWN WYNN, minor stops/breakeven, total P&L -$11 including all trades. Testing out various new time & sales techniques using increments of .10 for moves.



The key is, especially when testing out new signals, keep stops as small as possible, using very small-share trades, like these. Also I think it's important that I post my stop-outs as well as wins, so that you can see how successful stops should be taken, eg as small $ as possible.

2:40pm Bought 100 shares each ZLC GCI here w/close stops for swing/position trades; also bought 50 BAC 9.3 on breakout w/close stop

Near end of day: tried a couple of 50-share shorts HBI JWN, closed them out near breakeven; made a winning small BAC roundtrip; overall a scratch day, just +$8 net. Hey now I can go get me and the wife a cup o Starbucks...

Here's the day's trade confirmations. Note I had good specific technical reasons for entries in the HBI/JWN shorts, if you pull up the charts you'll see I shorted loss of bear cup supports on each one into the close.



3:51pm bought 100 more ZLC here before the close, shopping for more
Bought back 50 shares BAC into the close here near 9.75
Bought 30 MAC 12.04 (25-d high b/o, closing strong, possible gap+ play, unless weak market open tomorrow)
3:57 bought 100 DDR 3.12 (25d high b/o)

My longer term swing/position BYD closing in the money here, keeping on radar for in case it breaks 6.7 area in future sessions to add to position

Whew! What a day. Lessons learned: don't short on long-trin days, even if technical patterns (eg micro bear cups/weakness on stocks up >20% on the day) look great for shorting. What was done right: taking very small stops when wrong, and adding small shares for winning breakout plays. Also done right: kept share sizes small for counter-trend trades, eg 50 share size to minimize risk. Kept all trading under 50-200 share lots today, small shares since testing.

Best wishes,

Ken

Here's my IB Schedule D for one of my accounts I opened in November 2008 specifically to test some of my latest trading techniques. The results? A verified $12,645 winning net P&L on this 29k account (a full 43% ROI in 7 weeks):

http://www.TradeMastery.com/ScheduleDactualtrades.htm

Happy Easter weekend, traders --

Ken

April 13 2009
DNDN: Premarket move 6.4 to high of 8.8 then retrace to 8 area here
MGM LVS gap up (and others that are covered with specific alerts, in http://www.ChartScans.com).

8:55 am before the bell - looking to close out small share ZLC/BAC entries from Thursday on any weakness since futs down premkt here so far today during the open, after 9:30am.

Remember I don't like to trade aggressively the days before or after major holidays, especially Mondays, so likely I'll just scale out of any newly-started overnight positions that are hitting stop levels, and wait til later in week for more aggressive trading. Also note that since this is tax prep week and taxes due Wednesday, that'll likely put a damper on all trading volatility as people are preoccupied with that (myself included), so this is a "be a skeptic about the market" week coming up ahead. Focusing mainly on looking for 2-day high/low COMPQ breakout days, if any occur.