Trading Recap 2/17/2015

Today was my first full day trading on the Suretrader account thanks to the snow day. Not counting commissions I was up $37.00 and with commissions I think I am up just $7. I still have my HALO swing which I will talk about later.

HALO: There was news in the morning which caused the stock to spike up in the morning. I saw it when it was around 15.20 and going in line with what I said earlier about just letting it do its thing, I put it to the side as I was focusing on other stocks to day trade. Well, when I took a look at it again it I saw it came right to where I would have sold it and then came right back down. I was pretty miffed since I was up a decent amount at that stage and I didn't even know about it. I figured it might consolidate and then move back up. It dipped below 15 a couple of times but still held. Midday, it started coming back up but I was being patient. Towards the end of day, however, it slid below 15 and came within a penny of my stop before coming back. I would have been pretty pissed if I had gotten stopped out especially after being up a decent amount and not even knowing it. It closed back above the support although barely. However, I see some aftermarket prints in the 15.20s so it might gap up tomorrow. I will be watching it for any move back to today's highs.

Arrows are entries.

Day trades:

GLUU: I had this on my prior watchlist and decided to keep it because the daily looked decent. It formed a flag at the highs and I thought if it took the huge ask it could rip. I put a buy stop a few cents above the high of the day and got filled and it spiked a little before coming back and consolidating. I put my stop to almost breakeven and it just never did anything and eventually came back down to stop me out.

ARRY: I was being cautious with this because it had just made new highs. However, it had a good late day fade setup and I saw on the daily that there is usually some selling that occurs after making it's highs for the day. So, after support had cracked I started in short. It came back to retest support but it held as resistance. It never really did anything though and just hung around. I made a really small profit (not including commission) and had to sell due to having to be within 2:1 margin by 3:30 on Suretrader. I got filled right in time.

LOCO: This was a nice trade. I put in a buy stop above the day's highs because it was bull flagging and there was a huge ask. If it cleared, I know LOCO can spike quickly and that is what happened. It was a perfect parabola and when it started to curve, I put my stop right below the tip of the parabola to lock in all gains while also giving it the chance to rip more. It didn't rip more unfortunately but I got a nice profit out of it.

Tomorrow I am looking forward to GENE as there are now shorts available. If the opportunity comes, I plan to size in for the trade.

Things to work on:

1. Staying cool, calm, and collected throughout the day and during trades.
2. Always have current swing positions on a chart you can see (15min candles).
3. On stocks where you miss the initial, look for re-entry. An example of this is ROSG. I didn't even know about the it until after the initial move had happened. I am very averse to chasing, both long and short, however there are opportunities after the fact to go in and still make a good trade. An example is show below where it was retesting support and topping there which would have made for a nice short. I have seen this happen multiple times.