June 19, 2007
Stock Du Jour (BIDU) & Random Observations
Chop city, a fabulous day to lose money. Let me know if you made any successful day trades.
Notable New Lows: American Commercial Lines (ACLI), Encysive Pharmaceuticals (ENCY), US Airways (LCC), LEE Enterprises (LEE), Standard Pacific (SPF), and Mack-Cali Realty (CLI).
Notable New Highs: Lots of China-related stuff including Baidu (BIDU); Garmin (GRMN), Research in Motion (RIMM), Mastercard (MA), and EMC (EMC).
I’ll feature a weekly chart of Baidu.com (BIDU) since it came public in July 2005, and as it approaches its all-time high.
Cat: | Time: 8:52 am (utc+8)
June 19th, 2007 at 9:22 am
Made one trade: Scalped MA…..
June 19th, 2007 at 9:37 am
AKAM was fun.
June 19th, 2007 at 10:13 am
HRGREEN & Brian: Details? Entry, Exit, Time, Slippage, etc.?
June 19th, 2007 at 10:50 am
Short AKAM entry at 48.5 around 10:15, exit at 47.7 around 12:45.
June 19th, 2007 at 11:00 am
Brian: Thanks, I’ll look at it when I get a chance… AKAM is what I call a “usual suspect,” which means that it’s on the permanent watch list.
June 19th, 2007 at 11:20 am
Not me.. lost an R on CMED.
June 19th, 2007 at 12:54 pm
Lost an R on CMED also. Also lost an R twice with two dummy entries on SWHC. Rough day for this newbie!
June 19th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
Eyal & EC: CMED was the #1 Unusual Suspect but if you didn’t catch it pre-open then there was nothing there… a good example of how without a broad market tailwind (either short or long), it’s easy to lose money.
June 19th, 2007 at 7:24 pm
i’ve found intraday volatility terrible the past week or so. it means commish to the brokers, but no big cashola in my pocket :(
June 19th, 2007 at 8:54 pm
CM - you mean there was a way to tell that there wasn’t going to be anything there?
June 19th, 2007 at 9:54 pm
Eyal: I know my read of the tone is always something of a mystery (I hope to make it public at some point) but here’s a chart with my thoughts.
June 19th, 2007 at 10:12 pm
OK. Thanks, CM.
June 19th, 2007 at 10:17 pm
Yesterday’s tone = a gap & crap open, A/D line was negative (IIRC), volume was light, trading was mostly contained within Friday’s range and the first hour range wasn’t broken. Smells like chop to me.
June 20th, 2007 at 12:20 am
Today seems like a lousy day for dummy entries too:
TASR: 11 am dummy entry but very bad 10 cent slippage for entry at 12.85. Stopped out at 12.65 for 2R loss.
ZGEN 11 am dummy entry at 12.80. Stopped out at 12.63 for -1R.
June 20th, 2007 at 7:36 am
EC, those charts are pretty noisy. That is about the only way I can describe them. Wide 1st bars as well. Look at TASR’s previous few days. Chop city.
June 20th, 2007 at 7:54 am
I thought the unusual volume and volatility made it a good candidate…
I have been using gappers to try and find trade ideas. Run of bad luck though!
June 20th, 2007 at 8:34 am
Trader Mike: Thanks for sharing your expert view; what’s IIRC?
EC: Yes, today’s action very similar to yesterday — no broad direction (hell for traders). ZGEN an unusual suspect for sure but as Zoomie says, look what it gapped up into — check out the daily chart going back a ways. TASR is a semi-usual suspect though todays volume was high. Bottom line is the broad market wasn’t helping anyone anyway today.
June 20th, 2007 at 8:58 am
IIRC is “if I remember correctly”
June 20th, 2007 at 9:20 am
Trader Mike: Hmmm, my geeky acronym knowledge is lacking. ;-)
June 20th, 2007 at 10:00 am
It’s definitely harder to find day trade candidates on choppy days, but if the stock shows good setups on multiple timeframes it’s most likely going to work regardless. Take a look at the short entry on AMZN at around 12:45.
June 20th, 2007 at 10:50 am
Brian: True, there are times when the setup is so good that the broad tone is irrelevant … nevertheless I’ve tried to “evolve” to the point where I only get interested when most of the ducks get in a row.
June 20th, 2007 at 10:59 am
Chairman, you’ve mentioned that you won’t share how you read market sentiment intraday. Trader Mike has suggested using indicators to get an idea early in the day. Any other ideas? Something to do with looking at the qqqq?
June 20th, 2007 at 11:02 am
EC: Mike’s ideas are good; think along those lines… I plan to release a separate website that displays my “proprietary” tone indicator that will update in real-time throughout the day … don’t worry it will be free, but given my glacial pace of doing things it should be ready around 2010. ;-)