Trading Recap 11/17/15

Today had the potential to be a great day but I didn't take any trades. I really believe that I am starting to understand the generation of ideas aspect to trading, but I still have a long way to go. I just have to trade the tickers well. The thing holding me back from taking trades is not being able to have a proper risk set for my account. Since my account is extremely small, I need to look for situations where the risk is extremely low and the reward is great. Even taking 100 shares, like I mentioned a few weeks, is tough when the volatility is great. I know on one hand that there isn't much money at risk in an absolute sense so I should probably take any trade I think would work and see what happens even if I lose the $80 or whatever to get my account below $500. I try to keep the risk to around $20 at most so the risk would have to be 20 cents at most for 100 shares, which is tough. As I think I have said before, for now I am just learning as much as possible and may make the occasional trade or two (unless I hit a home run with one of my occasional trades). It's definitely possible to get out of this hole, though the odds are against me and I have no expectations. I do have some extra money but I would rather wait this time and save up more money than put all my money again into a small account only to blow it up again. If I had waited this entire time to fund an account vs. kept putting smaller amounts of money into an account, I would have had a fighting chance I think. But who knows, it's all speculation.


OCRX: This should have been the main gainer for me and I did notice the parabolic and the top that formed around $4.5. I could have shorted right around $4.5 with ok risk but I wasn't too sure about it since I have not really traded parabolics like this before, but rather the aftermath. I was looking for lower highs which came but the risk was kind of high. It then looked like it had higher lows (where I drew the trendline) and so I avoided it there, but then it dropped even more and kept fading the rest of the day. Another good lesson here is not to take the chart literally. What I mean by that is as traders we must have a thesis of a trade and then let the chart tell us in general terms of how to trade it. Small higher lows on the 1 min aren't that important, for example. But rather general over/under areas that act as support and resistance are the key, I think. Otherwise you keep psyching yourself out. If you shorted something and it breaks out or reclaims then the chart is telling you to get out. Smaller higher lows without any reclaim of support or going to new highs is not significant.

DKS: The only losing idea I had. I was looking for continued downside and saw it made nlods going for the support from premkt. I was thinking of shorting but didn't due to big risk and glad I didn't since I would have been stopped out. After it consolidated at LODs and reclaimed, it made a good long but I didn't see that since I had to go.

CMCM: I saw this gapping and at the open consolidating. It looked like a good short when it cracked support and I was thinking of shorting but again, big risk. Then again, if I went in when I should have, it wouldn't have been that big of a risk. Same as OCRX... I can't puss out like this.

CLVS: I was looking at the gap down and thought that this could have continued downside since it wasn't bouncing and I think a lot of people are in it for the bounce. The fact that it gapped down was evident enough that the market didn't take too kindly to their news. Part of the reason I was afraid to take it was because it was down so much but I have to remind myself to not think "oh, it can't go that much lower/higher" in these cases, like with CEMP in a prior blog post. The biggest reason though was I would have had to have $1 risk, which is too much, although even with 30 shares and it going down $2 that is a decent win.

SUNE: Another good idea I had that I failed to trade. I was looking at it from a bigger timeframe perspective and saw that it was still weak and could slip further which made me interested in the short. The prior day's support was $4.5 so I wanted to see that crack and then I would go in. Unfortunately, I wasn't paying much attention to this since by the time I saw it it had slipped even more. I was thinking of shorting in the low $4s but it felt like chasing at that point and not much downside would commence. Was I wrong on that..

Once I have a bigger account and can take multiples positions at once and cut the losers like DKS and add to the winners like SUNE, OCRX, CMCM, CLVS then I will be good to go.