Some Trading Humor
By Cliff Clark
How about something a little lighter today, a little trading humor, or maybe not you be the judge!
Two Men on a Plane
Two men were on a plane trip and just happened to find themselves sitting next to each other chatting. The first introduced himself as a trader, the second as a boxer. The trader asked the boxer. “So what do you do all day? You probably don’t have a fight for six months?” The boxer replied, “Well, I run 5 miles when I awake, I do 500 sit-ups, hit the heavy bag for an hour, hit the speed bag for an hour, then spar for an hour, jump rope for an hour, run another 5 miles and then eat a delicious steak and potatoes. Then I go to sleep at 10 and wake up at 5 and do it all over again the next day.
“That’s really impressive,” said the trader, “you must be very successful.” To which the boxer replied, “Well I’m moving up in the ranking's. I’m ranked 48th in the world. And how bout you? As a trader, what do you do every day” The trader was kind of surprised that anyone was even interested in what he did. But he answered anyway. He said, “Well I wake up, turn on my PC and hope I can find something that’s moving and then jump on it.” To which the boxer replied, “Really? That seems pretty easy. How much can you make doing that?” “Well people tell me you can make a lot as a trader. But so far I’ve been doing this for four years and still losing.”
Stop hoping and get to work!
2 trades for me today with +1.5R total
1st Trade QCOM +2R
148.39/149.97 exit 143.25
12% gap down under pivot support and 50ma after a strong daily double top rejection,. I took it on a congestion breakdown with a fairly wide stop, leaving my 2R target 50c over its ATR, slow but consistent move down with great RW, hit my target on the penny before it bounced.
2nd Trade AQB -0.5R
9.40/9.70 exit 9.56
I rarely trade stocks under $10 and even more rarely short them. I liked this daily chart as it broke its uptrend channel and stayed under a strong 9.50 support line enough room to its daily 50ma. I entered after a pullback with a fairly wide stop but only 1/3 of its ATR used at the time. It failed to break down with the strong market open and stayed in a narrow range.
I actually broke my plan with this trade as I lowered my stop to a pivot where price made a big bounce earlier at 11am with a large seller sitting there. My thought was that if it breaks that level again then it will likely...
1 trade for (-1R)
I took a BD on QCOM. I was worried about the target being close to the daily range, so I took a tighter stop on the 2 min chart. I am looking through PTS right now, most of the examples have 2 options for where to put your stop. It looks to me like one of the stops would be at the bottom of the main consolidation area, and the other at the bottom of where there has been a shakeout or turnaround bar (if there has been one). Due to the daily range I took the tighter one on this. In hindsight it seems obvious to take the wider stop, but in the moment it looked ok.
I was then looking at the 15 min 3BP on QCOM, but the reason I used a tighter stop in the first place was because of the range. The 15 min 3BP would have needed to have gone even further than the wider stop on the 2 min BD, so I didn't take it.
