Timing is everything

I am watching, loosely, the market today and seeing a surge above a resistance line in the S&P500...and most market indices I expect...that has me wishing that I was in the trades that I have orders for. Today alone would have seen, so far, about $6 per share.

My shorts were not well timed and I am rethinking my shorting strategy to take more of an overall look at market dynamics, or sector dynamics. I have an idea for using some sort of sector rotation to bias my trading direction and to determine which stocks to be trading at any given point. Still in the mulling over stage.

Taking a step back, all of the orders that I have are contingent upon a bit of a reversal or pullback in order to get executed based on my criteria. While I know this is bound to happen I am biding my time by looking back at the triggers that I started with this week and going back to the point in time when those triggers were initially more relevant. When I placed the orders the triggers had already been hit and I was hoping for a little last minute pullback into my trading range.

Now that the triggers have mostly run out, the next reversal that can trigger my initial trade entries will be on a new column of "O"s which advances up the trendline. This point on the chart for the last trades that I missed would have worked out as follows...based on my scaling into the trade method assuming that I had started as recently as July 1st and I used all my picks including BMI and SFG:

Current stop out value = $1185 (close to real value)
Closed trades P/L = $30 (one winner, one stopped out full and one small winner)
Paper value about = $1885
Due to my stops being at least $1 below the active price the actual paper value of my portfolio would be higher. Given the market sentiment I might be inclined to cash out for that extra and wait for the next triggers...at least on the stocks that are very near target values and may turn soon.

This gives me more motivation to hold out for my entries. It is worth noting that 3 were 30 shares, 7 were 60 shares, and 1 was 90 shares, The one that stopped out was the 90 share trade which is also the one that I see I would not have entered due to the chart pattern and due to the lack of shorting inventory, now I know. The numbers for the trades are about what I would expect.

Off to lunch now.

Jeff.