Trading Recap 1/15/16

No trades for me again today. The reason for that though is mostly due to being too slow to input orders and being unsure as well. The market has been quite interesting as of late and has thrown a lot of head fakes to traders. There was a lot to watch as well and while I tried to focus on the best, my estimates as to which ones would play out the best were wrong. However, one thing I have consistently noticed is that I am sometimes not able to see patterns I recognize after the fact in real time. This may be due to a lack of focus and if so then that means I have to focus and keep analyzing what is going on even though I normally resort to "there's nothing out there".

VXX/UVXY: I had an idea to short at the open because as the SPY was making new lows right before the bell the VXX/UVXY weren't moving much at all which was a signal to me to get short. Then when the market opened the SPY started ripping instead of flushing so I definitely knew it was a good shot. But by the time I had my short order entered it was too late and the decay had begun in both ETFs. However, I now notice a pattern I have seen many times before work on the SPY and could have gone long UVXY. This is one of the many things I failed to notice today, probably due to the fact that it was lunchtime and I wanted to head out. You can see the lines I drew on the charts below to illustrate that.

CDRB: CDRB was one of those that it all happened too quick and by the time the stuff happened it had faded a little bit more than what I like to base my risk off of. I think in the future I will just go for these since they almost always work and whatever even 100 shares if I don't get to add ends up being a good play a la EARS. Some went long in the chatroom when it started perking but I would have rather seen a trend form first then buy dips. While it was a good scalp, it ended up fading right back so you never know with these. I didn't think of any short attempts as the day went on especially since I was out but I don't like sitting around and babysitting the position unless I realized most of it or think it can fade a lot and have a decent sized position.

BSI: Nate warned about this in chat about it being thin (which it is) and being potentially crowded. It's hard to judge whether or not it really is crowded but what stopped me from shorting it was the fact that it had held up well yesterday after the halt and now with the news and gap up, potentially more shorts are trapped. When it went parabolic I didn't realize in real time that it had gone up around $1.5 in 3 minutes or so. The third candle was the place to short and I was contemplating a short around $7.5 but it is just like CDRB where it's not exactly close to the top and it is a bit more risk than I would like to exhibit and it is really thin and I thought it was crowded at the same time. I wasn't sure if all the shorts were covered into that push or now and that now it would have a chance to fall freely.

VHC: I had this on short watch for failed follow through momo. However, it grinded up past r/g and so I took it off watch since it wasn't doing what I thought it would. However, I should have kept it on watch (another miss due to lack of focus) because it had a pattern I have seen before (a certain parabolic pattern) and there was another pattern afterwards where it tried to breakout and gets rejected and starts to fade off a little before the real unwind happens. I saw the news and thought that it was bs (mostly a Roth capital mention) and I know it is probably chasers bidding it up but I guess I overthought the scenario and thought that there might be people (like Roth) keeping it up. Another lesson here is don't overthink.

Things to work on:

1. Always keep laser focus when trading on all setups.
2. Take those CDRB/BSI type trades.
3. No overthinking.