End of Day Journal (11-30-2010)

Summary:

Live trading on 50 shares:

Today was wracked by some frustration; set off mostly by the fact that I was at the bottom of the $4 craziness on NFLX and I bailed early. Why did I bail? Because I had been reading up on Al Brooks all morning and kept glancing at the 5 minute chart... pfft.

I have decided that I simply cannot do that any more. Mr. Brooks has a lot of good info and I will keep reading it, but I am going to stick to trying to apply the general concepts to range charts for now. This is working and I need to stick with it.

On that note - I decided to look at the end of day range charts from the 'perfect trade' perspective: I am going to review and analyze the charts to look for clues as to successful and failed entries.

Brooks mentions something along the lines of 'focusing on the details because it is often the smallest details that lead to the best trades'- and he is detailed. Incredibly so. This has inspired me to prod and poke the range charts for whatever they can afford to yield. Reading over his information has highlighted the differences between 5 minute candles and range bars. Time adds an entirely different dimension (pfft...).

When I started reviewing today's range charts, I realized that all I have to look at are price and volume - LOL! My first thought was that there was no way that I could get the information from range bars that Brooks reads from 5 minute candles. But then I realized that he had to start somewhere as well; at one time he may have thought it impossible to find what he needed in 5 minute candles. This might be a stretch - but if I wanted to keep things as simple as possible - time may be an unnecessary complication. But... heh, what do I know? I am willing to give it a go for a couple of weeks to see what I can find.

In fact, I did find several things to help with tomorrow's entries: not trading against the prior 45 bar; avoiding non-trending stocks (realizing that I will likely not get start of trend entries often), and a re-enforcement of the 'stutter volume' on big momo moves. Feel free to call out anything you might notice as well.

Too tired to review/edit this post, so please forgive the grammatical/spelling errors. Will try to get around to it tomorrow.

Trade well.

Details:

NFLX:

Check out the volume on the HOD and the subsequent swing low (below).This happens over and over again on the momo moves. I didn't trade the top or the bottom because it was out of plan - and right now I am all about staying in plan. But it sure was tempting...

 CMG

 Here is the swing on CMG; not as clean on the top and the bottom was indistinguishable.

FSLR

 AMZN

TNA

I mentioned on this chart that I thought a lower range would produce the volume stutter on the highs, but I checked it down to a range 10 and it did not.