By Cliff Clark
Does anybody else like to watch super hero movies or TV shows? I sure do. Especially the older shlocky ones like the 1960's “Batman” TV series. Was there a dumber TV show ever produced? Probably not. Well, maybe you could make a case for “My Mother The Car” but I digress. Back to super heroes.
The one thing all super hero's have in common is a super power that makes them so powerful that they can take down a whole gang of criminals with almost no assistance. It makes the world a safer place when we can have super heroes coming to our rescue.
Unfortunately we as trader's don't have anybody coming to our rescue when the market is beating us up and we haven't been gifted with any super powers. Or have we? We have been gifted with a wonderful trading education! We are working hard on developing our skills as trader's to become successful. Perhaps as we develop these skills we can develop our own super power. Our super power is the one thing we can always count on to get us out of a jam. Having a bad day? Turn to your super power.
To develop your super power pick one strategy that you love and develop it until nobody can trade it better than you. Master that strategy, don't focus on anything else until you believe you are the best trader there is at trading that strategy. When you have a series of bad days or bad trade's you can take a step back and focus on only trading only your super power. It'll help your psyche knowing that you have something you can turn too when times get tough!
Master a super power and you have just become a super hero!
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.
