bounce day

The market finally giving a bit of relief today. 

...And I tried to short COIN, which opened up something like 18%. Because? It will reverse off the 5ema, my "thinking". Hey, why not short something weak? It did show relative weakness all morning, but I also shouldn't be surprised it failed to break down intraday. Ugh. On a Friday. 

Proper bias this morning should have been: long after profit taking pb.

Red day. Deserved it.

One last put still open on a wild hope it goes itm.

MOCO and DC area traders!  Bring your trading buddies and join us on Tuesdays. This is a friendly professional networking group for individual daytraders. https://meetup.com/potomac-daytraders-network/

melt down vs capitulation

Oy this market! Agonizing meltdown with no relief. And yet no capitulation/panic. Vibe is more of a prolonged rolling doom.

Market action today is strong whips. I didn't have any setups. Lost 2% on SPY puts in the open and called it quits. 

bbands and staying in

I've been experimenting with Bollinger Bands on all timeframes. What can bbands do for me?

So far, bbands have helped me stay in winning trades longer. During a trade, I am inclined to look at my pl and think "That's enough! I need to lock it in before it evaporates." And close a trade too early. 

Bbands are helping me look at a trade and realize... ok, that's normal volatility, I'm ok, I'm ok, I'm ok...

Today, BABA (which, maybe I shouldn't have been in in the first place) eventually established a trend. It never dropped out dramatically. It just kept eroding and eroding. The kind of thing where I'm likely to tighten down too early. *Sometimes this is correct to do, like on a Thursday or Friday when I lose time quickly and won't gain in absence of a strong trend.

Today I did stop out of half of BABA for a loss, but I was able to hold the other half for a nice ride into green. Looking at the bands (2sd and 3sd) on the 5- and 1-min, BABA stayed "in the river" and also below the midline most of the time. When it tested the top bands on the 1-min and bounced back down, that's a new lower stop. 

Eventually, BABA really simmered down to pretty flat and the market tried a bounce so I took it off. If not for bbands, I'm pretty sure it would have been a red day today. 

not bull enough

Market opening big gap up today, but relative to things lately, it is still inside yesterday's meaningful bear day. Action is not bull enough. I'm looking for shorts off highs.

Plenty of gaps up on the screener, but most are inside, even if they are +3% gaps. The gaps down screen are -20% and more.

NVAX excellent setup. Got a great entry, but then the spread opened up to 30%+ on the option. I was lucky to get out for pltgt and don't look back (well... looking back, I would have gotten wrecked)

BABA is poised for major tl breakdown. It flusssshed on the open. Grabbed micropause and then traded it tight. Didn't get pl, but got out green. Peace.

MSFT I wanted the 270 breakdown again. I think the setup is valid, but it didn't work. Maybe gave it too much room, but don't regret that (eh... much).

Today I'm looking forward to the first Tuesday noon trader meetup that I started. Hope to meet some great people. 

"The Art" and stops

2 trades today, FB and NVDA. On FB I minded my stop. On NVDA I gave more room. Why? 

FB trade I got in really fast/early. It dropped out and then reversed hard immediately. Adhered to my stop. Later it did what I wanted, but that was after a while of an actual uptrend and holding vwap, etc. I didn't know that at the time, so I could only act on the immediate full reversal bar.

NVDA, why did I hold puts for new highs? First of all I was in somewhat smaller and had a better entry, so I didn't have to trade it so tightly. Interesting!! That's something I don't show on the charts. NVDA is weaker on the daily and doing a more promising breakdown (so, why wasn't I in davka bigger? minding my risk). It still didn't feel good, but it wasn't crossing p/l thresholds. 

NVDA exit: I am working on trying to go smaller/hold longer, so when it got to the pl tgt, I tightened my stop but didn't trim. I was trading for a stock price target. It made the ~175 area target easily and did only a small pause before going to the 174 area target. Looking at bollinger band charts to try to help me $$volatility, and it stopped riding the 3sd band on the 5 also touched the 2band on the daily (source of the targets anyway). Captured much more on this trade than I would have with the 20% first target. But more info needed to rely on this.