Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Daily review - January 12, 2010

What a day! Though the DOW was down only 0.34% for the day, if you are a momentum trader like me, then the chances are you saw a lot of red on the screens today. The momentum plays, not surprisingly at all, took a much bigger hit than the rest of the market. So, lot of these charts look technically spoilt now - lower trendlines have been broken or flags and triangles have been broken to the downside. Here are just few of the momentum plays that I follow to give you an idea of what I am saying:

CGA down 9.58%
CAGC down 8.35%
CSIQ down 6.42%
FEED down 5.05%
KONG down 4.66%
YGE down 4.35%
SEED down 1.07% (nice! could have been better had it not closed on low of the day)

I am sure you get the idea by now! So, are the technicals of the overall markets any clearer after today? Absolutely not!! The bears had a great opportunity to take charge of the market today but they missed it. So, where do we stand? No clue and absolutely dont care! If you are like me, you have probably had decent gains during the last couple of months. Do you really want to gamble your hard earned profits on earnings? It's clear that the market is going to be driven by news/earnings now. My strategy is to take each day as it comes and try not to hold any positions overnight.

I am completely in cash going into tomorrow. As I mentioned in the last post, I sold my PAL and SWC positions for a slight profit and loss respectively. A couple of months ago, I would have definitely tried to catch the bottom of the day but today I just wasnt interested. Its nice to see/experience your own growth as a trader but I also know I have many more miles to go in order to be a good one.

If I see any interesting positions, I will post them later in the evening. I know of one OTCBB stock that is looking really good right now and will try and post about it (dont know how it did today, so will study it before naming it). I personally dont play OTCBB stocks, but it might be useful to some of you folks out there.

Good Luck tomorrow! Try not to be too dependent on luck though :)

2 comments:

SmartyTrades said...

I hear ya. I didn't even make any trades today. It just wasn't worth the risk and only one of my setups targeted....before correcting the other way. I could have scalped a few, but decided to sit on the side and stay in cash.

positiontrader said...

Firstly, congrats for being the first person to comment on the blog Keith*! Surely a proud moment for you!

On a more serious note, I agree with you. Actually scalping is exactly what I would have done or tried to do (to be more precise) in a similar set up a couple of months ago. But somehow, those plays never work for me. That doesnt mean I will stop doing them though :)

After the decent build up in my account in the last few months, the risk/reward ratio just didnt seem right today.

Cheers!

* Apart from me, of course!