no bids

The market can not get a grip. At this point, even though I'm raking it in, I'm very uncomfortable about the big picture of the market. We're on the precipice. It has seemed this way for several days. Wednesday's wild run up after the fed announcement was a glimmer of hope, but we gave that back the next morning and much much more. 

This is different from my other feelings of "panic" at lows we've bounced off. This is more like looming doom. A feeling that it's inevitable, so how much is it going to hurt? 

If they say "hold your nose and buy" then is now the time to buy? Ugh. We know I'm not good at picking bottoms. I would only long-term add/buy when my market sentiment changes. I don't need to pick bottoms. 

I've had a few stellar days lately, tucking away some gains. Today caught the opening selloff on NVDA. Was not on my screeners. Meir pick. It's Friday in a crazy climate, so I got the flush and got out!
(as I write this 90 min later, nvda bounced hard and is~191, up 1% on the day. Must lock gains!)

Holding for hope

Market getting crushed today. 

Yesterday was a stinking weak day until the fed came out and lifted markets about 4%. Today, wiped out. Opening 2 hours were nothing but red. Really a blood bath. No bids.

I picked W today and went a bit too big on it (bc thin spready option... will I learn?) and hoped for a Thursday gem.

I got almost 20% in the opening push, then held. I wanted 30% out of this (greed!!), and the ask got there easily but no fills. Then I held with a bracket.

Pause to relate: I'm trying to see what bollinger bands and RSI can do for me. Can this help me stay in trades longer? What I think I've learned so far is that it's ok for it to test the opposite band and still be in "reasonable volatility" vs trend change. Will continue to test this.

Back to our story... I may have gotten lucky this time, but I took the attitude that "I hold for hope when the trade goes too far against me, why can't I hold for more when the trade is doing exactly what I think?" So I held and held (and went out to Costco), and held for what I had always believed was an ambitious but entirely reasonable stock price target. 

B"H! I got it and had a great green day. 

With that said, the "easy" money would have been otm puts on the indices at the open, but that's hindsight. 

5 min

1 min

pop and drop

Today there were a few decent long picks. None worked. OXY Category C loss. MRNA D loss (is there another kind of loss on MRNA?). Ugh.

green to red

 Standard green trade in the open on WDC. Got the opening move, pltgt, tight stop on stall as maket reversed. Textbook.

Then gave it all back an more on MOS "failure to fail". MOS setup was valid. Gap down on volume. Traded up, then faded with market fading, but when it reversed sharply, I got trapped bc huge spread (yanked my stop, wtf!). I need to just avoid the huge spreads. I'm not "too smart" (and not lucky enough!) to outplay massive spread.

I'm not getting a lot of setups for my breakout trading... for a long time now. I need to work on another technique. Maybe a mean-reversion technique / bollingerband plays maybe. Probably also need to invest in TC2000 so I can screen for whatever I want intraday.

The gift of the p&l target

Two trades today. Each off in full for p&l target. Done by 9:36. 

FB I had 202, 207 levels above. It pushed up strongly at open. I grabbed a small position, took it off for +20% and it stalled/reversed right after, while the the market was also rolling over. In retrospect (at 11am) I can see that it held the day low (even while market flushed) and went strongly to 207 and beyond, but I have no regrets making 20% in 2 min and not suffering the pb.

Simultaneously, the market started to weaken so I looked for a short there and I got the flush. 20% pl target and 9:36 I walked away. I've been trading the near exp SPY options a lot lately, for a feeling that nothing else is setting up. Over the weekend I was thinking how I tend toward that in a lazy way. That I should be looking to play relative strength/weakness and not the index itself. The same-day expiration, though! Gambler mentality?