Buy and hold?

I see lots of equities I used to own doing well today. I really wish I better remembered trading near turkey day from years past to have some idea of the ebb and flow of things. I do not keep good track of that sort of thing, perhaps I should. I'd started a simple notebook of market action, tracking indices, VIX, Tick, mainly with the idea of capturing some explosive moves off bottoms and tops. If I kept this up for years maybe it would be easier to look back. This web journal really does not delve into that kind of rhythm reading yet. Hmm.

It is not quite trading related but I passed my orange belt karate test this past weekend. This requires dedication and effort that I hope will reflect well upon my trading. The next belt is green and will require more.

Good reads

Follow these links for some good reading.

http://www.tradinggoddess.com/2009/03/trading-mindset-common-psychological.html

http://weeklyta.blogspot.com/2009/02/tying-yourself-down-personal-experience.html

Another good trade

Market not right at the present. Daily chart candles suggest move up over for now, 2 days ago big price spike up with close near the low along with lower action yesterday is what had me preserve profits. Percentage wise this is one of my best in months. Click chart for larger image. FYI, these charts are always basic, I follow a few more things like moving averages to decide on trade entry, also some measure of volatility to decide on trade size. I did not follow this strictly on this issue, in fact, when I first decided to enter stock, I proposed a tighter stop for others, and was thinking more like a $21 stop for me, glad it worked.

A few things that I have read about technical analysis and canslim investing suggest that any stock that breaks out of a base and moves 20% in less than three weeks needs to be held for 8 weeks as it might go on to be one of the big market winners. I can look back on my trade history and see plenty of stocks that are higher now than what I paid for them, I will simply just follow this for another favorable controlled risk entry, it has a good story.

Perhaps these short term swing trades should be my specialty? I am doing quite well at them the past few months. I might miss some of the moves at the start and end, but I am banking coin/ringing the register. I want to have the next 3000% stock, but waiting for such a big winner might have me sitting on losses. I need to masticate on my approach to this: go for longer term buy and hold, or stick with short swing moves?

I talked about this stock to two people in my life, not sure how this affected the trade.

IPO research

Months ago I was keeping good track of IPOs, got quite a list of them. It seemed like some I was following closely at the time have gone on to nice gains. About the time I was getting into futures I stopped this discipline and following. Well today I had it on my list to get back to this research, have now built some watch lists and put some stuff on the quote screens.

At first it seemed like good easy money could be had. One of the key chart patterns I've heard about of late is a Uturn or IPO Uturn. Several IPOs exhibit this, then break out to new highs, generally on better volume with increased or new highs in the RS line. I found many with 10 % gains, other with >60% gains. I got all excited.

But I am the kind of person that has to be careful what I put into my brain. Most of the IPOs were actually very messy in the charts. Many of the issues were tough to believe in on a fundamental level. Much pain could be had.

I will continue to keep my eye on select IPOs, those with good stories with room for exponential growth, those that large institutions would buy and hold for years.

Trading is a lonely pursuit

This am as I put in some honest time reviewing charts I am struck by the utter loneliness of this pursuit. I want to exchange ideas with like minded people. I want to share my insight, I really feel like I am finding some great charts with tradeable patterns setting up. I want to share with my coworkers, my spouse, my family, those on net forums. But they do not share my interests. Even those on the computer like me think much differently, do not appreciate the way I do things.

I guess in a way, I want to avoid the work that needs to be done and just sit around and talk about stocks. But the meat in the middle is found by doing the hunting, putting in the time. This systematized approach is what yields results.

Production electric cars

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_production_battery_electric_vehicles

Wait for the right time to pounce