One trade for me today on BLK. It wasn't your standard play but it's something I do on these types of gaps. The company had earning and gapped up and eventually the gap turned into a gap down about the same % it had been up. I like to watch the open on these with no direction in mind but looking to a 1 minute high or low. I loved how this washed out to 739 and snapped right back up. The high was at 751. I played it long with those numbers. I knew there was some resistance on the 60 min in the 770 area from a few days ago but I'd be at BE by then. It moved up to the 765 area pretty smoothly to get me to BE but then drifted lower the rest of the morning before stopping me out at break even. It would have been nice to use a smaller stop but that wasn't possible with a spread opening to $3 at the time. This is not the type of play I would post in the trading room but thought I'd give you some insight into my thinking on stuff you might not see me post in the trading room.
Opps, I take that one trade statement back. I also made a pre-market entry on BABA in the 242 area with a $2 stop, 1/4 lot. It moved higher at the open never got a chance to get full, it moved about 3/4 way to tgt and stopped out BE.
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.
