Closed one more trade today, one who hit a stop order. I have very few positions left open. I stayed quiet this minutes as I was not sure how the market would react with all the minutes of silence for September 11th here and there.

I plan on looking for a few more good swing candidates tomorrow morning, from about 10am onwards.

Type	Sym	Date-in	Price-in	Date-out	Price-out	R-Mult
	CCBL	09/07/2006	8.00	09/11/2006	7.20	-1.08R

I was watching NMTI from 8/21/08 and thought it looked like a classic swing between channels. It was coming down towards the EMA line from the upper channel, the Stochastics was turning up and crossing, giving a buy signal. I was ready to get in when NMTI crossed 11.50, which it did. It did work out very well since I sold NMTI yesterday at 14.15, a good 7.69R trade for me. Of course, all this had absolutly nothing to do with technical analysis and everything to do with the announcement on August 31st that NMTI got the big FDA approval they where waiting for to modify the main goal of a study (more on Reuters news). I wonder how many of these I can stumble across by shear luck while using a system that targets something else. Continue reading →

Trades for today, September 7th 2006:

Type	Sym	Date-in	Price-in	Date-out	Price-out	R-Mult
	GTE	09/05/2006	0.52	09/07/2006	0.58	1.45R
	NMTI	08/28/2006	11.36	09/07/2006	14.15	7.69R
	GNSS	08/28/2006	13.39	09/07/2006	12.34	0.60R

I have struggled for quite some time now and tested different of what to post in my blog with regards to my watchlists and my trades. In a ideal world, I would like to post my trade ideas and watchlists early in the morning for everyone to see. The reality of my life is that the list is never ready in time and because I trade only part-time, it would be hard to be consistent.

So for the time being, I will post post-mortem type information, a recap of the trades of the day at night (when applicable). I acknowledge it will be a lot less interesting for the (few) readers but it is the best I can do for now. As time passes, I may find a better way to post a watchlist of sort every morning.

Type	Sym	Date-in	Price-in	Date-out	Price-out
	INT	08/30/2006	36.06	09/06/2006	35.82
	Â	Hit stop on a down day
	BID	08/30/2006	27.99	09/06/2006	27.33
	Â	Hit stop on a down day
	RAD	09/05/2006	4.26	09/06/2006	4.32
	Â	Hit stop on a down day, saved some profits keeping stop tight

The last couple of weeks have worked out pretty well. Again, nothing to write home about but enought to keep my head above water. Of course, the market was pretty quiet so I was somewhat sheltered from heavy movement. I cannot wait to test my trades after Labor Day to see how things workout.

Today is a day off of sort. I will still watch my positions in case an exit pops up (since I have no orders out there to do it for me) but I not looking for anything new to add. I will review my charts and thighten my stops if need be.

Since august is coming to an end, I decided to take some time this weekend to go over some of my trades this month. I will focus of three of them, two winning and one losing.

The first one is probably my favorite, a winning trade of SCVL opened on 08/08 at 20.85 and closed on 08/21 at 23.96. This is not incredible profits but 3.11/share is nothing to shy away from (for my needs anyway and for a beginner). I also like it because it looks like a classic swing. One negative, my entry could have been a lot lower, looking at the chart now we can see how I got in near the high for the day. An entry under 20 would have been much better. My exit was better but not perfect either, in the upper half of the range for the day.

Continue reading →

I just closed 4 more paper trades and I re-evaluated my current results. My PnL has just turned green which made me happy. My winning probabiliy is at 44% by my W/L ratio is at 1.23. Using the Kelly Criterion I get K% = 1.21 meaning I should not currently commit more than 1% of my capital in one equity. So in the current conditions, I would need a failry large amount of capital to make money with limited risk. I will try to improve this in the coming weeks.

My ability to paper trade will be limited shortly because my trial to Worden’s TC expires in a couple of days and I am not ready to start paying the subscription yet (I am somewhat stuck in a catch 22). I am not sure what I will do yet as I have some more PCFs and indicators to build. I could probably try to use something cheaper for the moment.