Notes

I need to keep USO on close watch at all times as I missed the start of a breakdown. It was breaking down without SPY or IWM this afternoon. Having one of my best days in weeks today with IWM.

Epic Bear Trap Day

Overall I traded well today and was green. I spent a lot of time looking at crude oil because I realized it bounced off a support level I had drawn. I had to switch some postions around for that. During this time it would have been better for me to have just been trading IWM. I was looking at my short stocks watchlist at open for weakness but quickly realized we were way way to oversold to not have a high chance of a bounce. I switched to longing stocks and got chopped on a one or two. The highlight of the day was shorting IWM just a couple candles off the first overbought top. It always looks the same near highs. A bunch of super short candles just catching resistance and flattening out going sideways. I could have gone bigger on the size if I had fought for price better off the top and the next top which was a perfect channel. The wicks were very telling and I could have filled some put options. I'm still happy overall but just need to work on entries. I wasn't able to trade the rest of the day and who knows I probably would have caught the next top which was actual high of day. I actually longed the bull flag off trend support I drew up. That was a super easy read. Then I shorted more on the channel break.

Monday 10/10/2022 Daily Evaluation

I had a good read on XLE and SPY all day Monday. I traded XLE 9 times with 5 being profitable trades and no big losses and overall good profit to loss. Definitely worth it. That made me a little overconfident trading it at the open today. I was looking for follow through like it has done in the past off the open but it was the worst chop. I ended green today though and have been green 5 of the last 7 trading sessions. There are good and bad days as with everything. Back to Monday. Best winners were XLE SPY CYXT short and the worst was ADEA short which was poor risk management. I don't think I had a hard stop and was super busy with a ton of positions on. It finally faded out today and I participated some. I had 8 or 9 positions on at one point Monday. All breakdown shorts. I've noticed some days IWM SPY XLE are easier than others to read but when they are for me XLE trades very smooth. Aside from ADEA Monday I didn't have any major flaws. Trade management could have been better but with so many positions it was tough. I just wanted to be in the right one because I had high confidence in a red day going in. Having more screens might help in seeing the charts. I set alerts but it takes time to look at the charts still.

My biggest struggle in past weeks was being selective always and not overtrading. I've been better at that lately but need to work on getting better entries and scaling in bigger so I can put on larger size. It's nice to be green but the days could definetely be bigger. I missed a trade on XLE and a short on ZYME today because I was looking at other things. The ZYME I was actually away from the desk for that one. I had my first day of being net down on the day to coming back green today. I'm doing evals a day after because my broker uploads confirms the next day. I need to work on larger sizing going forward and avoid options on indices and TSLA or big-cap stocks. Those were my biggest downfalls on bad days.

Setups Evaluator

I use Tradersync to track my performance. My best setup by far is crude oil multi-day and it's not even close. Roughly 28 trades total spanning a couple years atleast. I have multiple accounts so I probably missed several trades atleast from years ago which likely would even improve my stats. The past couple years I'm solid on it though. My average winning % on crude is 75%, losing percentage 73% with a 69% win rate. Average winners hold time is 2 days and losers hold time is 2 days.

The obvious thing to do from those stats when I first looked at them months ago was to tighten up the losing percentage. The only thing is I hold the options for days and sometimes would be in the red before they went green. Just based off memory once they went over 50 or 60% red I would usually be wrong for sure. So I decided to have a general rule of stopping out at 55-60%. Because losing 100% at expiration is bad if I know I should cut earlier. I know it's more important to stop out when I know I'm wrong based on technicals alone. So the more I think about it that should be a factor too. In the past though I would just let them ride to zero because I know the winners would make up it. So I am going to monitor them better.

My second best setup has been buying long consolidation triangles. I am super picky on what they are which is good. A perfect triangle doesn't show up much though. But it is definitely a strong setup. I've sort of viewed my multi-day breakdown setups as the same as bear flag setups because they are pretty similiar in nature. I'm going to analyze these a little more so I can screen nightly better. My hunch is lower volume, lower market cap are better setups. I'm doing some backtesting with Stockfetcher this weekend to fine tune this. I'm looking at a gap down screen too for shorts.

My other decent enough sample sizes are long bull flags which to me is a consolidation flag over 3 days. Under 3 days I call high flags. My long bull flag is 39 trades atleast with a 43% win rate. I think over 40% win rate is a workable setup for me. Supernova short setup is 32 trades 47% win rate. Breakdowns are 61 trades 42% win rate. I need to enter in the last week of trades to update all these but I don't see it effecting any significantly to the downside. I have a sample of 37 trades with multi-day breakouts but only 32% winners and average win percentage 10%, loss 6% and still overall it is a net loser. This just reinforces the common knowledge that pure breakouts are usually an overcrowded trade and ceased to be consistent years if not decades ago overall.

Strategy Thoughts

I like doing puts on TLT as swings. That's one thing that is working right now. I also really like shorting breakdowns and bear flags on fairly obscure lower volume stocks near a breakdwon. I like the intraday price action because there are no tricks like larger caps. I suppose it is the lack of algo's on them. They generally follow trend and don't whip up and down in every candle which is my big peeve right now with so many stocks. I'm going to go over my best setups and do a ranking to assign risk. In recent weeks and months I did ok trading BABA IWM SHOP intraday. I haven't been doing as well on those the past couple weeks. My number one vehicle and setup by far with a large sample size is multi-day directional puts and calls on USO. I've taken more breakdown trades lately and I think the potential on them is the best if the ovearall market keeps breaking down or even if not because there are usually stocks breaking down with a rising market. Shorting intraday spikes or overbought is good but it depends on the ticker.

2 Day Evaluation

Daytrading continues to be challenging to put up a good sized green day. I'm still in it even with pretty bad risk management even though I'm trying. I can get a couple good trades in but end up giving it back with just average setups or tickers I know are tougher. From what I have had infront of me there are usually only 1 or 2 GREAT setups in a whole day. It really hasn't been worth it to trade anything other than those. I had some big losers on TSLA puts. The daytrades that come the easiest for me are shorting overbought spikes intraday.

My options and positon holding account does way better than the daytrading at this time. I'm doing more in that account now. I just put on a ton of shorts and puts. I've been longing USO calls every week and doing well with those. My strategy for crude oil that works is just being in the trend. If it is in a daily uptrend I buy calls, downtrend buy puts. I just took a put because I can afford to try and catch overbought here. Shorting multi-day spikers or Supernova's as popularized by Tim Sykes is a crowded strategy now in my opinion or atleast crowded enought to prevent easy low risk trades that can be held overnight or awhile without risk of squeeze or chop. I am not the fastest with entering orders with daytrading and it takes skill as when these movers are in play they move up and down 2,3,4 or more percent in split seconds. I always prefer market orders because I never want to miss a great trade but it can be costly with intraday movers. I focused more today on getting a lot of these 52 week low type stocks on and ones off bear flags near lows. I went small size with wide stops and plan on trying this stratedy multi day as long as the market keeps downtrending. I just pick ones with steady downtrending charts and consistent red to red candles. My theory is short seller manipulation looks like long side manipulation just in reverse. Usually these ones are lower market cap and less than $10. Like XPEV or NEOG is right now.

Selection was better today but still another red day. I was busy just putting on a lot of shorts and puts in the am. missed the Weed stocks shorts at open because I got started late. CGC was a short sellers dream today.

Daily Evaluation 10/4/2022

I reduced size and main goal was risk management. I made a good short on HROW and had some good scalps. I could have not taken a mediocre setup or two and would have finished better. Trade managemnent was good, risk managment good, selectivity wasn't good. Looking at performance I should be focusing on option swing trades and multi-day trades and going with small size on daytrades with extremely selective setups.

Daytrading Watchlist

For Tuesday the 4th I have long biased FNGR as always but it is going to dump one of these days. NAIL ATHX RVNC-in calls AERC JWEL-in stock SPRO SOBR FNHC

Short bias BEAT HROW TC PRTA ABOS ILAG FUBO Major indices look like they are going to try and start a new uptrend technically. The top downtrend trendline is getting testing. It may fail and fundamentally should. I am prepared to flip biases on major positions though.

Daily Evaluation 10/03/2022

I'm overall happy with my trading today. I made two good morning trades on FNGR and CSCW and stayed out of trouble the rest of the day. I severly reduced my position size to get back in the groove after two max loss days in a row.

S&P 500 Analysis

The yellow lines are rough support areas. The red trend line is the downtrend we are in and I think we very well may hit that on this leg down without a bear flag. That is how low we can go short term. SPY is way ahead of IWM. IWM isn't breaking down like this. I bought some IWM puts Friday.

Charts! And More Charts!

Welcome to my blog. Some of you may have come from 2+2 Forum. I am going to try to post more charts up going forward. I may even do a video blog or two on things I see and setups or trade recaps. It helps me too to analyze more charts. Here is a recent trade I made in Royal Carribean RCL. I was running nightly screens or "scans" as I call them for charts that haven't had a serious downtrend yet. I stumbled upon RCL the other day and saw a setup as a bear flag break. A bear flag is the opposite of a bull flag. It's just consolidation before the next push. I drew an "internal" trend line on the daily and shorted the breakdown and held through the retest up to $48 area as you see the green candle came back and failed to break through the line. Twice actually there two days in a row. Trend lines are never precise and an internal one captures the most points one is evident. The one I drew here is a little rough but showed the big picture. I made a good trade on RCL with weekly puts and sold on the gap down move. I think it has a lot more downside and may re-enter.

BEAT started to go red candle during the day above the upper bollinger band which is "the kiss of death". The candle has to print though and we didn't get it but usually these massive spikers that get far above upper bollie come down the next day. I shorted some and got stopped out. It will have a red day sooner or later. Maybe Monday. FNGR is a similar chart. FNGR keeps squeezing.

Daily Evaluation 9/28/2022

I had a bad trade on ADBE that was oversized that ruined the day because the loss was big. I had a good SPY trade that helped but selection was bad and risk management was bad. Big loss day. Today the 29th was about the same but couldn't get anything going after I missed the bulk of the a.m. move. I nailed a long on FNGR on the red to green move but entered in the wrong share amount. Just that kind of day with sloppy errors. I am going to have to avoid IWM SPY until a clear trend is made. This chop the last two days hasn't worked for me trading them.