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Wednesday, December 5, 2012

The VTSO trade for SPY, active

If you read my last post it briefly outlined trade ideas based on the McClellan oscillator as a trigger and the chart indicated a trade to open on November 15th.

Here is the oscillator:


...and here is the current SPY daily chart:



Today the adjusted VTSO has the stop at $134.76. While this price is still below the entry price of $135.98 the loss, should the stop be triggered now, is not very great.

I toyed around with the idea of taking profits at 4%, 6% and 8% gains along the way but found that just leaving the VTSO run and adjusting it at those particular points in the trade is more profitable by about 10% overall. While the smaller realized gains serve to give the feeling of success, they are not necessary. Having said that, a target exit of 6 % has the best bang for the buck if I decided to go that route for a smaller sidebar trade.

Jeff.