Unfortunately today I gave back all of Friday's gains and a little more. I can't really say it was due to really bad trades overall. A lot of things didn't go my way like not getting my borrow in time when I wanted to short something which would have worked really well and then something really odd happening in BAS that was the perfect storm to fuck me over after my stop didn't get triggered. On the way back home I was trying to think about what my strengths are and how I can only trade setups that fit my strengths. The thing is I'm not really sure what my strengths and weaknesses are. I know my strengths have to do with patterns and such but there has to be more to it than that. I will keep thinking about this more as time goes on.
SGEN: I saw the news about the patient deaths and while I was initially short biased, I remember that this type of news is what a lot of shorts go after and it can become crowded. So I was cautiously long biased at the open. I didn't trade it until I saw a potential breakout area as I wasn't too confident in buying any dips. I had a wider stop initially for the breakout but as it was hovering around there I moved it up as I didn't want to get caught in anything unnecessary in terms of stopping out. It was going to work soon enough or it was probably a fakeout. It ended up being a fakeout so my moved up stop helped me as I realized what it was. When I saw it had failed I became more short biased and was hoping for it to retest 54.50ish for a short but it never got right to that level and faded off after making a lower high. Once it was under vwap I thought about shorting it at vwap/resistance but never did. The reason I guess for this was because it wasn't a particular "pattern". I guess at this point it was more evident that it wasn't squeezing or anything and was more likely to fade so any shorts at good resistance spots would be good. It ended up consolidating under vwap and I thought about it then too but didn't for some reason. That ended up working and then the pops to the new resistance area were also good shorts as well. The breakout didn't look too good on the 5min and was definitely chasing over there. On the 3min it looked like it consolidated a bit more. Other than that, I have to get back into shorting pops and long dips more often vs. breakout/breakdowns as I have mentioned in the past.
BAS: What a stock... I was mainly short biased on this as I thought it could fade because it is still a shitty company. I saw some pattern/offer stepping down a lot so I got in but then for some reason got stopped out when my price never triggered. This would have ended up being a big win for me. Later on I tried it when it rebounded and the offer was absorbing after it stuffed through it before and it was at resistance, so a few things checked off for this trade. The only thing was the bids were absorbing on the way up so I wasn't too sure but I figured more boxes were checked for it to work than not. It didn't work so I got out for a small loss. Later on is where the trouble happened. I tried it again after it dropped from vwap a couple of times had a nice pattern of lower highs. I thought I could get $1 scalp off of it for the most part. I waited until it wicked through the whole number/resistance area and shorted with a stop above the whole. I did this because there was a potential pattern there for that to give it a tight stop. What ended up happening was a once in a lifetime sort of thing where it broke the whole but didn't reach my .05 stop. It just kind of broke it and then came back under it so I thought I was good and then it broke it again, almost hit my stop but didn't and then the bids and offers just jumped up randomly and never got me out because it was above my stop. Then it started climbing so I panic covered/just got out since it was way past my stop. It ended up coming back down and then doing exactly what I thought it would. This was a very weird stock overall and extremely thin so I won't draw any conclusions other than you don't know what will happen so sometimes a tight stop vs. over/under can screw you. Had I risk to over/under I would have stayed in most likely but that is hindsight.
NVDA: Tried a small short with a tight potential stop when I saw volume increased a bit and it hovered around. I thought I could get at least a scalp out of it but I stopped out quickly. Like I say, anything can work but it was probably a bullshit trade. The volume wasn't that great and it was just grinding.
IONS: I was more short biased on this since I have seen a lot of FDA approvals get faded and the news was better for BIIB than IONS if I read it correctly. I didn't trade it out of the gate but I did try it when I thought it had a fake breakout but upped my stop quickly and got out when I realized it wasn't a good entry. It went a bit higher first before coming back down. I tried shorting it under $55 when it broke thinking that it could fade the rest of the day or at least to the high 53s. When I saw it consolidate under $55 I added in and then moved my stop to flat. It made a new low by a few pennies and that was it. I got out for essentially flat. When it reclaimed I was thinking of going long for vwap which would have worked but it might have stopped me out as it went a bit lower first before rebounding.
Things to remember:
1. No bullshit trades - they take emotional capital from you that you need for the better trades where you can scale in.
2. Dips and pops..
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