Trading Recap 7/7/15

I broke even today after two trades including commission. I think I may alter my strategy to not focus on these random names I find on watch for r/g longs, at least for the summer (or forever) because while sometimes they work, a lot of the time they do not (from my limited experience trading). It might be because of the summer volume or the market, or a combination of both, or it can also be that this is how it always is when playing random names found from scan. For now, I will monitor them but not trade them to see what they end up doing.

White arrows are entries followed by exits.

DVAX: This is one of those stocks found by scanning for stocks that went up at least 5% and could continue higher. I had it on watch and saw a good pattern forming of higher lows/ascending triangle, so when it broke out I went long. It ended up failing and I cut it off after it attempted to make a higher low but failed. It ended up looking like a HOD consolidation pattern for a short, but I didn't short it (while it could have worked, it "wasn't a short" - hard to describe but it's not overextended or anything and it's not a pig so just playing a random intraday pattern seems like a waste of time). Anyway, these are the types of stocks I am referring to that are just pulled from scan and have no news or momentum.

PLUG: This, on the other hand, is a known POS and has plenty of momentum and it turned out to be a winner. When I was thinking of entering the trade, I already figured this would be for around 10 cents to around $2.4 using a 50% mean reversion between the HOD and where the prior open was. I saw it basing at 2.5 after failing the ABCD breakout and there was a lot of support there so when it first hit 2.5 I decided to wait because I remember on SGNL where it looked like it was going to drop but had one more spike which might have been due to short chasers. It did end up going up a few more cents but it still looked very weak overall so I shorted at 2.52 after the bounce failed and a quick flush came. nLODs came and it then bounced back after that and I said screw it and took my profit on the next drop which ended up being a higher low and it reclaimed the 2.4 support which was my cue to get out. It came back later and reclaimed 2.5, so it was a good trade overall. I was glad that I just took my profits when I knew there wasn't much left to be had (most likely), instead of waiting around for it go lower and it just comes right back to breakeven.

Things to work on:

1. Stop playing random names - maybe??