Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Why I went to Cash


I went to all cash on Monday morning selling my positions one after another like dominoes going down.  The reason I did was that I got a big warning on the market monitor. Over 20 Stocks were up over 50% on April 24. What the 20 > 50%  signals is that there is over exuberance in the market the bullish side. That's the equivalent of red lining your car.  You could push it more... but its not going to end well. 


The Beer Goggle Effect

After a big run, you will start to see the quality of setups diminish.  Nonetheless,  many traders start getting beer goggles and start thinking that every setup looks good.  Next thing they know it they wake up the next to something hairy and it hurts when they pee.    




In my opinion, the market needs to hit the reset button here and clear the junk out so that the good risk / reward trades are allowed to present themselves.

Remember, cash is a position and sometimes it is a very good position.

Cheers!

Saturday, April 18, 2015

Review of www.Stockbee.biz

I thought I would do a post about the stock trading sites I subscribe to, why I subscribe to them, and how I am trading the setups utilized by those sites.

The trading community that I have been a a member of the longest is a momentum trading group called

Stock Bee.



Stock Bee is run by Pradeep Bonde (a/k/a Easy Guru).   I followed his  free blog for over a year before taking the plunge and becoming a member. I have been a member for about 8 months now. I believe its about $300 for the year. It is an excellent value for the expense.

Subscribers are afforded access to a vibrant community with some excellent traders.  You will find that there a number of different strategies that are traded and members are very helpful showing the ropes to new traders and sharing the nuances of their setups and systems to each other.

You will not find stock picks here.  I like to tell my friends that Stock Bee trades setups not stocks.  By that I mean, there is a hyper focus on the quality of  individual setups but there is little to no discussion of the fundamentals for those stocks.

With that caveat, the bread and butter setups taught by Stock Bee is the the "Momo Burst".  The Momo Burst was a significant part of my trading strategy and a big reason why I made 47% last year.

A momo burst looks for:

(1) stocks in an uptrend (preferably the beginning of a new trend)
(2) a period of range contraction
(3) a range expansion that is bought
(4) a 3-5 day move

Risk Mangement:

(1) stops generally placed at the low of the day.  Stop hunting algos? We don't care a good burst should never look back.

(2).  EG's trade risk is usually around .25-.5 per trade, But I usually go 5 to .75 of my equity on a trade.

Stock's Free Blog highlighted  GMAN as  good setup and it is a perfect example of what an ideal momo Burst would look like.

It had a very powerful move and has then entered range contraction and on the right edge expanded.


PROS:
This set up appears 1000s of times a year.
Many opportunities to practice the trade
A postive expectancy.

CONS:
Are you mentally prepared to make 100s of losing trades a year? 10 loses in row?
Can be mentally exhausting

My Experience
 I had a 57% win rate in 2015 and an avg win / loss 1.03 / 1.00.  So not great but that small edge builds up over time.  Even so, I can attribute  a lot of my gains to just a few trades. For example, I had a trade in RWLK  I risked . 25% of my account and made 6.6% gain on my account on just a 1 day Burst.

My chief disappointment with the system is that there are a ton of failed range expansions and also there were a number of burst I sold for 5-8% gain winners on stocks that would run 100-200% from that point.

I want the monster moves!

The "Episoidic Pivot"  The EP trade is supposed to go after the monster move.  The Theory is that a stock goes through an major game changing event such as fantastic earnings after being neglected for years.  Stock Bee's summary is here.

On an EP you want to buy as soon as it happens even pre-market and your looking for 50% + gains moves. You want to see massive volume and a gain changing news:


Pros:
The gains can be enormous.  Jesse Stine used this type of strategy to take his account from 46K to over 6 Million in under 3 years.

Cons:
The setup appears infrequently.  The only EP I've had were NOK when it sold it's phone division to MSFT and RFM when it merged with TQNT.


My Experience:

I've been awful with this setup.   The true EP appears infrequently and there are many false positives. If you are buying pre-market gaps on non-EP's you usually get stuffed.  A lot of times great earnings can be subjective, and how do you really know whether a bio tech's news on a phase 1 or 2 trial really has significance?

I've also noticed that there are many stocks that make fantastic 100% +moves without ever having a true "EP"

It is these stocks that I've been studying and trying to figure out how do I get in them. Perhaps there's a way to quantify an EP type stock without having to read the tea leaves in press releases?


Update 2018:

My favorite part of stockbee is the forum-- which I affectionately call the beehive.  There are many different styles of traders in the room.  Although I've since moved to a longer term focus since first joining, there are other traders in the group that use my approach.  Others are 100% mechanical and there are a few day traders.

The people I've met in the group include people that that have placed in trading competition and are now doing national speaking engagement.  So its an amazing opportunity to learn from some great traders. I have benefited immensely from the free flow of ideas.





Wednesday, April 8, 2015

The Struggle

I hit this one of on a pull back to 13.90   On a weekly I can see there is a Week 1 breakout and this thing is going higher. Easy right.  Not so much.

Yet I sold it yesterday after watching this painful hour, sure it was only a .70 drop, but when you have profits and your seeing them rapidly evaporate you start thinking where's the bottom? Am I going to give it all back.    So I pull the trigger and take a 10% gain.

 Of course the next day, ADXS rockets for 17%, which is why I write this post. After all, if it had continued to drop, I would just think I'm smart.  Oh well, something to work on.

For whatever reason, It is easier for me to sit through a pull back and keep to the plan if I don't have big gains in a stock.   On those types of trades I know where my stop is going to be when I take it. If it goes against me fine, that's expected but when I get up big the exit is not so clear.



Sunday, April 5, 2015

Chasing Power


Eric Muathe's  You Tube Videos are a must see for the traders looking for big moves.