CMC surpasses targets this morning

Today my CMC trade has passed the $15.00 target. The trade had called for a possible entry at $13.50 and $13.00 but the $13.00 mark never was hit.

That makes a nice 11.1% gain in about 3 weeks and change.

Now, I have not closed the trade myself yet as I let it run past the profit target, something I am apt to do if I am trading with a trend. I have placed a tight VTSO of 25 cents which puts me somewhere above $15.00 now. I will probably close the trade before the end of the day even if the VTSO is not activated.

The reversal trade for this is coming up for a short at $16.00... I need to double check that entry as I did not think that CMC was going to hit target so hard this morning... so I did not do the chart work to determine the short yet.

Jeff.

Slow month

This month has been rather slow, or maybe that is just me.

I am in 9 active trades right now, closed a loser and a winner... one closed I reversed the trade to go from a profitable short to enter a long immediately.

I gave some thought to only trading with the trend but found that the historical studies and long term trial period supported the idea of playing both sides of the trade under the majority of circumstances. While this does increase the risk a bit there are entry rules to skew the trades in favour of the "with the trend trades" that, while consistently applied, produce reasonable win rates.

Currently I am at a 75% win rate as I have closed 3 winning trades of four trades taken since starting the trading in my margin account last month. Although I obviously need more trades to make any stat relevant I still have all the back data to support 75% as an acceptable expectation for a win rate.

I just double checked and I am in 5 short and 4 long positions... which just goes to show how undecided the market seems to be... perhaps that is not really relevant as the prices on each stock with fluctuate as they will without too much input from the market overall.

Not much to talk about yet.

Jeff.

Free Time

I have not had this much free time in a while, at least as far as trading is concerned.

I have pared my hit list down to 14 stocks that are active, that means they would be traded the very next time that a setup occurs. I have 6 open positions (five of which are currently showing a paper profit) with 2 or three that I place orders on each day (shorts cannot be GTC, only day orders) and the rest I am actively tracking for the next entry possibility.

With all this free time I am getting other things done that I have been procrastinating on and, when I get free time from that I run another stock or two through my wringer to see how they would rank. Tonight I eliminated a possible tradeable due to some nasty volatility that would have me whipsawed out of trades far too often to be worth the bother. I am sure that it could make a very good candidate under one of my other trading plans but I am being very diligent in sticking to only one for the time being.

I do have another to be added once I finish my analysis of it. I know that I had about fifty from last year, and most worked out very well but they are outside of my criteria now and I need to replace a good chunk of them. I will feel comfortable once I get 20 active stocks in my own portfolio but I will continue to add to that number in order to be able to continue tracking and analyzing my trading plan over a wider selection of tradeable stocks.

All in all I am quite satisfied with things as they stand right now. Being able to run a new stock for suitability in about 45 minutes and end up with a ranking, profitability and next trade setup without having to agonize over charts, read accounting statements, financial reports and check for news events certainly is a nice way to trade.

Jeff.