fing lucky

I traded 2 tickers today, both nms 🔨

AMC gapped up after a reversal day, a continuation day, and today day 3. Seemed so strong, I thought/dreamed it would go above 28 as an anti-gravity play. Nope. Anyway, anti-gravity... really... is that one of my setups? F! I lost a lot trying that over and over like an idiot. Tilt. 

UPST, while actually nms, at least had some sort of logic. It was on my screen from yesterday (note: reset my screens each day...). Yesterday was gap/fail day, but today UPST seemed to hold on, and it did a strong bottoming formation in the opening bars. I went long in the surge. Then it spent the rest of the day teasing in a huge range. 

On one hand I held bc it didn't reach my tgt and it didn't break down. On the other hand, I took a 0dte call and I didn't really have time to wait. It spent 3 hours basing... and losing time... at not a great take profit level, even as the indexes climbed strongly. 

Something happened after 2:00 that sent the market up another bump and finally budged UPST awake again. By this time, spreads were like 30% in the spread so I knew I needed to get out on a limit. I hate that situation. Baruch Hashem!! It went to my price target and I got a good fill on a moderately ambitious limit order and I managed to close green on the day for all my idiocy!

When the market is ripe, rake it in!

Market gapping up again today. Yesterday was a gap above a several day flag. 

Market is very ripe for breakout and continuation moves. Trust the moves to happen(?), and ride for the gains! Have to capitalize on days like this.

Cocky, yes! Watch out for that. Is it overconfidence? I don't think so. I think it is realizing that today and yesterday were ripe for big moves and I played for big moves.

What is play for big moves? Trade breakouts. Breakouts should work, so give room. Watch the market, watch other movers for sentiment. Ride the wave.

SHOP, breakout with news above long term base. I chased a little on the entry. I initially calculated a 30% move, and there was a price level just above so I reached for it. First touch, limit order didn't execute so second touch to my target, I took a market order. After some chop and some ? in the market, I got out of the second batch on stop. Last smidge to ride... didn't quite make the price target, but volume wasn't pushing that leg. Market and others on watch weakening. Didn't want to give any back, so I locked it. BH!

Follow up end of day

WHOA!!

Have to take those gains! What happened to the market?

give a chance to work

I need to work on my entries. I will come back to this thought.

GOOGL beautiful. I'm trying to hold winners longer by giving it every possible chance to work, given the set of rules that I've developed.

I didn't enter well. The daily setup is not yet a breakout, so there is no reason to chase it. In addition, the market gapping massively up on CPI, so I should expect it to need to chill, do price discovery at the open. There was no reason to jump into this.

When it finally got to 119.97, my initial target area for pl(30%!) and for stock price, I squeezed the stop on half. What a relief! Even though you could say I could have given it more of a chance to work, everything(mkt, other stocks) was pushing resistance and I didn't want to give up anything once it reached my target. Anyway, that's why I leave some on. Second target was based on the daily upslope tl. GOOGL went through it easily, but I didn't want to give back that leg. After the first hiccup, I took it off.

Back to entries. In this example, if I used the thought that the open required price discovery and based on this not yet breaking I had time to wait, I could have entered differently. Would I have entered lower? Not necessarily. Maybe the alternate entry was 9:45 after the flush/recovery. I may have gotten in a few cents lower. I also would have had more certainty about my stop level. 

In my real trade, my initial stop was, by eyeball, "wide stop" below the premkt low. I only didn't get hit by luck. After that bounce and reach new high in the 9:45-10:15 timeframe, why didn't I raise my stop? Greed, I think? Overconfidence that my move would happen = luck? At the time I was thinking that today is Wednesday, and I do need to start being mindful of the TIME that I'm losing on the trade. Thursdays and Fridays I can't give that kind of room unless I'm really near being in the money (and even then, don't be a jerk). 

So that's the emphasis on entries. A "best" entry will give me profits better/faster. How can I work on better entries?... ugh.?

As I write, 40 min after I closed, GOOGL is making new highs again. In retrospect, maybe I could have weathered the pb, but it would have been into the midday session and not a sure thing. Would have costs me a lot of psychological capital. No regrets on either of my exits. Maybe future planning I would take 40%/40%/let 20% trail. Or 45/45/10 if possible

subtle mentality shift

What is the subtle mentality shift I feel between winning day and losing day? It's not the feeling of being right/wrong. It's not the aftermath of victory or defeat. 

I think, losing lately is the feeling(result!) of abandon, of fck it. Winning is the feeling of keeping a grip on it. I need to recruit more of the "keep my grip" mentality, and not the "fck it" mentality. Probably also in other areas of my life.

holdling winners

Two green trades today. On LI, I waited and it went well. On MU I jumped too soon, waited with bag in hand, still did ok. 

I do like how I exited. Check market move. At first SPY consolidated. Only at 9:45/9:50 it finally made the move to help me. Then in the 10:10 bar when SPY looked to bounce, I squeezed my stops. Both trades were near/beyond my pl target, but neither got to my stock price target (ambitious ones, granted). 

Today I was motivated by this IG I saw https://www.instagram.com/p/Cg1dhrLA4-p/
The best way to hold winning trades is to give them every possible chance to work, given the set of rules that you've developed. 

Was it in my set of rules to hold MU like that? I think it would have been better to stop/reenter, even though my loss at the top was close to max loss, where I would have stopped above there would have been beyond.

LI trade was farther OTM. So, coulda'shoulda gotten more with a ntm.

counter trend

Waiting for targets... 

SPY short did a fake above my hope level before dumping. I then tightened my stop and closed it before the dump to the "dream" target I had.

While I know I need to just trade my system and not try to hold for dream targets, maybe if I had more contracts, I could have left a trailer on for that move. That's TBD later. What I do know is that counter-trend trades need to be taken off quickly.