I’ve had another profitable week so far and I’m on my way to another profitable month in a row since last November 2013. Today was a tougher trading day for myself, in the old days, I’d would have lost big time today but I’ve learned to control my losing days. Keeping my loses small and always taking my stops has been a major breakthrough for myself as a developing trader. Today was a scratch day which is now become typical of my losing days. I had some great trades today in ESRX and GILD but as I’ve mentioned before I’m going to shares my losers as well, since we all will learn more from the losing trades with our hopes of never repeating them. My loser of the day came in SBUX which I found on my daily list as a Daily buy continuation play. I entered SBUX on a first 5 minute buy that triggered on minor support at reversal time. Price took off like a rocket and put in a level I pivot 30 minutes later when I added bring my play to a full share size. Price again looked like it would continue higher but after 10 minutes, price went sideways as we were heading into lunch and dipped below my stop level where I was stopped out of the play. As you can see by the chart I may have been a little too aggressive going to a full share size on my play so early on. I should have just sized the play from the original pivot and attempted to add and reduce the stop later. I could have just went to a full share size from the beginning which I’ve found is hard to know when to go full or not to, which is the dilemma for all traders. Today the market gapped down then rallied for the first 5 minutes before rolling over hard and setting the low for the day by 10 am. I felt that the market would stay weak and therefore made it a hard decision for going all out on my play in SBUX from the start.
Anyway, my major aha moment came when I realized that my stock picks were usually correct but that I needed to make sure I stayed in the play until my stock made the move, this requires the trader to allow for a shakeout or breakdown especially over lunch. As you can see with my play in SBUX as price left upward without me to target, which could have been easily remedied if I would have made the addition on the 15 minute time frame later on in the day.
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