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Tuesday, January 3, 2017

Trading Recap 1/3/17

Slightly positive day to start off the new year. Should have been a lot more. I must continue to realize that it is ok to lose money in this profession on the setups that make sense to you - and only those. I was more selective today in what I wanted to trade but was still hesitant in executing on trades I thought were good. However, thinking just purely in terms of s/r and going by that almost exclusively for my trades has proven to be a good change and one that I need to continue focusing on in order to avoid any bullshit trades.

NVDA: I wasn't sure if I should long dips or short pops on this at the open so I decided to wait it out and see what would happen. At the open it dropped, ripped back, and then formed some sort of a "pattern" of mine where it looked like it got rejected but I wasn't going to take a trade based on that. I am fully committed to rework my trading to really just focus on s/r trades as looking at charts now make things seem much clearer for me and how my mind works. It made a new low but then came right back to the same level as the prior low. This is another "pattern" of mine that also would have worked in this instance. But I am "detoxing" myself from any bullshit trade so I wasn't going to take them. After it made new highs and retested the support from Friday where I thought about shorting but decided to wait for more info, it came back down below the breakout area from before. This here was a legit trade. Unfortunately I didn't get in here. I'm not sure had I even put an order in that I would have gotten filled. I guess a potential lesson here is to break up your order maybe and do half at the lower end of where you think it will peak and then if it goes towards the higher end then add the other half and you can stop out if it goes any higher. The part I actually got in for was quick, I saw it was peaking a small area of prior support and looked like it could fade. I shorted it on a "pop" and was immediately in the money and right after I shorted it, it dropped and made new lows. I had put a bid in for a $1 lower than where it went. I was contemplating if I should move my stop up or not or let it test around to see if it could go lower. It did break on decent volume so that made me think if it got above $100 again then I'd just get out. It ended up going through $100 by a bit and getting me out. I thought it was a mistake at the time but it ended up making a higher low and then rebounding. Process wise it's 50/50 as to whether or not I should have moved my stop up or let it test around with a breakeven stop at worse. When it started going below some lows I thought it could fade more so when it dropped $100 and started peaking it a little I shorted there. Here, I put a breakeven stop and it was for the best results-wise. But I probably should have given it the full out to over $100. It was one of those "it should work right away moments" and while it worked here it's not good process. The bigger reason probably is because it was a chase on the normal chart and not the tick chart I was looking at so that might be the reason I was anxious.

DUST: I bought this on what looked like a bullflag pattern that ended up being a fakeout. It looked like a decent bull flag but it just faked out/I bought at resistance. I gave it a decent amount of room on smaller size but I knew it faked out. I might try this again though as I have seen it work. Maybe I should just focus on the dips/pops though. Later in the day I thought GDX was topping and at one point had a fake breakout and a lower high so I bought DUST on a dip twice. The first time I prematurely stopped out although I figured at that point it wasn't going to work. Then it did start to work a little but then I put a breakeven stop as we were getting towards the close and it really was just going to either work or it wasn't. The pattern on the GDX was quite weird and it ended up going higher at the last minute at EOD. It ended up shaking people out and then reclaiming and then going higher. Not much to learn from this experience as it could have definitely worked and the higher timeframe didn't negate what I thought was going to happen to happen. The only thing to take away is to be more selective with the flags you take and possibly just stick to s/r.

Things to remember:
1. I must continue to realize that it is ok to lose money in this profession on the setups that make sense to you - and only those.
2. A potential lesson here is to break up your order maybe and do half at the lower end of where you think it will peak and then if it goes towards the higher end then add the other half and you can stop out if it goes any higher.
3. Any pattern/chart can do anything - just play off of s/r.
4. Volume exhaustion has to make sense in context - IDXG the biggest volume was way early in the run. It's not always the best indicator of a top or bottom. 

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