February 17th...the fake returns for a day...

Today, the day after the North American holiday, President's Day, and Family Day up here would not have been agood day for me to typically be in the market, so I hung back.

The Global Gold index (GD) started high as the price of gold jumped yesterday...and it only stands to reason that gold related stocks, and therefore indices, would rise accordingly. As it was GD started near the top of my pivot points, which puts me out of my "zone". So I decided to do some technical fake trading to see what I could stirup, and to keep me on my toes.

I'll post the GD chart here with a different annotation than normal. The red boxes are the HGD trades start and stop times and prices and the green are for HGU. The circles are my break even or losers, and they will bee noted as well.

Given the start of the day I figured that it was going to be a flatish morning with a decent gap fade in the afternoon as soon as the 200sma caught up again. I didn't get the gap fade but did see a return to below the opening price, so a little fade. Perhaps the rest will happen tomorrow. I would just buy a full load of HGD at the top but I don't trust picking a top outside of the pivot point ranges. I ended up having a go at a couple of points and alternated buying HGU and HGD figuring that I might get lucky and catch a top...no such luck. The nice double hump could have given me a technical entry between 1250h and 1315h but I was not watching at that time...I probably would not have taken it anyway as my morning trading did not produce any great numbers to use as a buffer.

Once the price crossed the 200sma (green line) I jumped in (yah, I should have jumped in for real here as this is a close to a sure thing as I can think of in trading) right where the price popped back up for a quick test. The only reason I would let this trade go so long is that I am gaining confidence in my afternoon calls and the HGD profit went negative on me. I thought about it at the solid red R3, and again at R2+1/2 but bailed before that line was crossed. I got back in as the line was recrossed for a last trade to top things off for the day.

A note about technical trading...even though pivot points are such they are not determined on the fly so I consider them a bit different. The red and blue lines are the 30sma and 50 sma respectively. Often they indicate a trending period and they did just that in textbook style today. Right up to 1230h the price stayed mostly above the 30sma which stayed above the 50sma. in the afternoon the reverse occurred for some nice downtrending action.

Here are the trades, all the HGD trades are in the $7 range and the HGU are in the $15 range.

1023h Buy $7.43 Sell $7.48 Gain 5 cents ps Return 0.7%
1028h Buy $7.43 Sell $7.43 Gain 0 cents ps Return 0%
1055h Buy $7.30 Sell $7.34 Gain 4 cents ps Return 0.5%
1124h Buy $7.31 Sell $7.29 Gain -2 cents ps Return -0.3%
1127h Buy $15.73 Sell $15.83 Gain 10 cents ps Return 0.6%
1138h Buy $7.24 Sell $7.27 Gain 3 cents ps Return 0.4%
1156h Buy $7.19 Sell $7.22 Gain 3 cents ps Return 0.4%
1202h Buy $15.86 Sell $15.98 Gain 12 cents ps Return 0.8%
1334h Buy $7.24 Sell $7.42 Gain 18 cents ps Return 2.4%
1501h Buy $7.42 Sell $7.50 Gain 8 cents ps Return 1%

For any prices under $7.30 I bought 500 shares, higher than that would be 400 shares then HGU in the $15 range is at 200 shares...just due to the limitation of capital in the account.

The final tally was $116 net, 2.9% return based on a $4000 capital base...commissions in the morning killed me due to the small moves but I decided that I need to be in more trades in order to be there when the price does move more substantially. At noon I was only ahead $10 net. At least it would be tax free.

So tomorrow I am looking forward to a better day trading as I hopefully can just do some real trades. I do expect a possible drop in prices over the course of the day and even a jump after the 200sma crossing, a bit of a reverse of today. We'll see though...the proof will be in the pudding.

Jeff.