After market chatter

Well, yesterdays trading ideas worked out well. As it turned out there was no ranging of the gold market, just a nice downtrending day. I had worked out three exit strategies aimed at maximizing the time spent in HGD should Global Gold happen to remain in a downtrend. I didn't run the fourth.

The last method includes letting the price run while holding back using the 30 50 AND 200 sma for exit prices. The strategy would be to move my stop to net break even early to minimize any losses quickly...I don't mind getting knocked out of a trade at this point even if the move continues, part of my capital preservation plan. Then using the 30 sma as a stop while the price move is steep, switching to the 50 sma on a pullback toward the lines.

Once the price has passed one or more of the target PPs the stop is moved to those prices. I use the pivot points and halfway points between the points to allow for slightly tighter stops. I now use the monthly pivots as I have noticed them being at least as valid as the daily stops. This puts me somewhere between the 50 and 200 sma.

Worth noting that with Esignals all of these points are plotted automatically so I eliminated the need to calculate and manually plot points and lines on charts...I can now just pull up any chart in a moment and it will automatically have all my studies and indicators placed. I'll go through those in another post.

This is a tough strategy to follow for me as I like to have shorter trades and on the days that I decide to try this the price is ranging and I do not stay in for long. Yesterday was a classic downtrending day though and it would have been a very good move as the total index move was from about $330 to about $303...HGD moved about $1. Considering that my normal position size at this point would be 500 shares (I could do more but 500 seems like a nice number and I have not tried more than that recently to see how it might get executed).

I have noticed in the past that the last 30 minutes of the market sometimes reverses for a bit so my exit would either be a tighter stop as the market nears EOD or just selling for the nice profit around 1530h.

I am working on setting these various strategies and rules down in writing in one place for easy reference to remind me of my goals and plans on the fly. I hope this will remove some of my more speculative moves, make my entries and exits more calculated and also allow me to remove the various interruptions as the plan is set...less thinking and therefore less emotional involvement.

Jeff.