Owner: Bullish Jim's Trading Blog URL:http://www.stockbuddytrades.blogspot.com Join Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2007 19:42:37 -0600 Rating:0 Site Description: Chronicles of a stock market dabbler. Blog covers my newbie attempts at short term and day trading and contains my general stock market insights. Site statistics:Click here
RACK crushed after hours... 2007-04-05 13:51:00 I've owned the stock less than 60 minutes during regular trading hours and I now stand to be down a good chunk of change when the market opens this morning. In fact, I'm expecting a loss of approximately 1.2% of my blog account. Apparently some people didn't realize their numbers were going to be that crappy. I certainly didn't expect them to guide down last night and I thought their bad quarter was already baked in at this point but, alas, I was wrong...
Wednesday trades 2007-04-05 03:00:00 Holding QID overnight didn't bite me in the butt too badly. In fact, I could have made a few pennies on it had I sold at the open. Instead I held a little longer and ended up losing 18 cents on the trade. I bought back QID again at the end of the day, but it's a normal size position just 1/3 the size of what I held overnight last night. That seems a little more sensible.THQI was flying today for some reason and I couldn't resist selling into the strength. With it up around $1.50 on the day I sold for $35.64. That's a gain of 3.9% in 4 trading days for an annualized return of 237%. Just like OI yesterday, however, it kept rising after I sold. I know I'm over trading a bit on my winners lately but I'm still trying to find my rhythm on these short swing trades. I'm getting better at cutting my losers off quickly but I still need to let the winners run a little more.Speaking of cutting a loser short, I got rid of HPC at $19.66 today after buying at $20 off a BOB yesterday. The stock Read more:Wednesday
On the RACK 2007-04-06 03:19:00 If only I hadn't bought RACK at 3:45 yesterday I would have had a pretty nice day today. If only "if and buts" were candy and nuts we'd all have a wonderful Christmas. You can say that again.As I pointed out earlier, CUTR had an even worse day than RACK. CUTR used to be a nice little swing trader for me, by the way, as I purchased it three or four quarters in a row, ten days or so before earnings were to be released. I got a very nice pop each time and dumped it before earnings were announced. At any rate, the stock was down 30% on the day today and once it settled at about 10AM it provided a couple of nice day trade opportunities. Although not quite a BOB, the 10:15 bar would have been a nice entry. I didn't buy then, however. I foolishly waited until 11:30 instead at which time it was totally obvious to me that the stock would rise forever and ever. I was stopped out for a small loss about 20 minutes later when my "rise forever" hypothesis proved incorrect. The correct e
Portfolio as of 4/6/07 2007-04-09 13:56:00 RACK has certainly screwed up my April so far as that one gap down now leaves me trailing the NAZ for 2007. Easy come, easy go as they say. I'm just going to stick to my process of picking stocks and I'm confident that I'll soon be beating the indices once again.I'm on vacation this week so my comments will be shorter than usual. Here's the portfolio as it stands. I'd be happy to dump some more RACK if I get even a tiny bounce. And QID, which I didn't mean to hold over night, will be sold on Monday.Disclaimer: This is not advice to buy anything. Do your own homework. Read more:Portfolio
Back from vacation 2007-04-13 01:32:00 I just returned home this evening from a family trip to Washington DC. It was the first time my kids had ever seen DC and the first time my wife and I had been there as tourists in many, many years. We did all the cliche tourist things (museums, monuments, capitol, etc.) and had a very nice time. For me personally, a high point of the trip was our visit to the World War II Memorial. It was the first time I'd seen the memorial and I found it particularly moving. World War II had ended more than twenty years before I was even born; heck, my parents were young children themselves when the war took place. That said, WWII has long been a fascination of mine and I've read literally dozens of books about the war. Among the crowd of people at the memorial when we were there were several men in their 80s wearing caps with "World War II Veteran" emblazoned upon them. Standing there I couldn't help but wonder what they'd experienced and how many friends they'd lost in the war. I wondered wha
"So it goes" and other post vacation ramblings... 2007-04-13 04:04:00 We lost a giant of literature this week with the passing of Kurt Vonnegut at 84. My favorite writer since I was a teenager, I re-read a number of his books over the past year or two and found them, ironically, to be as insightful and brilliant as ever. I hadn't expected stories written by a secular humanist, socialist, atheist, pacifist to hold up so well in today's world, but they surely do. I suppose naive notions like human decency and altruism never really go out of style. Here a few classic Vonnegut nuggets:History is merely a list of surprises. It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again. Live by the harmless untruths that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy. Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies -- 'God damn it, you've got to be kind.'So it goes. Google to acquire DoubleClick
Portfolio Update as of 4/13/07 2007-04-15 16:50:00 Because I was busy doing family stuff this week I wasn't able to provide daily trade updates like I usually do. I didn't make a whole lot of trades, but I'll provide a brief summary here of what I did this past week:Sold off my QID position on Monday for a minuscule loss. I hadn't intended to hold it over the weekend so I took advantage of a little intra-day weakness in the NAZ to exit.I was stopped out of AAPL on Tuesday for $93.50. I should have sold a week or two sooner but this was still a pretty solid trade. I had bought it on 2/27 for $84.40 so that's a gain of 10.7% (annualized return of 93%).I took my loss on RACK in several small sales after giving it a little bit of a chance to bounce. The loss on this one was an infuriating 17 to 20%. The chart now looks like it could be bottoming but it could also keep drifting lower.I took my profits on XING on Friday with the chart looking a bit directionless. I bought that one on 4/5 for $16.57 and sold on 4/13 for $16.93. That's a Read more:Portfolio
, Update
The Yahoo Fish that got away 2007-04-18 15:34:00 I've had so few good actual trades lately that I feel compelled to write about a trade I ALMOST made yesterday. It was 3:45 yesterday and Yahoo
was set to report earnings after the close and I was looking very seriously at the YHOO April $30 puts. I have nothing against YHOO but the stock has been on fire and I just couldn't envision an upside surprise from them. These $30 puts could have been had at 3:45 in quantity at $0.20 to $0.25. Granted, I wouldn't have emptied my account on them but I was very close to buying a little less than $1,000 worth of them. Well, you know the rest of the story. The stock is down 12+% this morning and those little puts are worth seven times what they were worth at 3:45 yesterday.So please, if you would, raise your pretend glass and join me in an imaginary toast to celebrate the make believe trade that I didn't make. Drink all you want; it's only pretend.By the way, I'll be watching YHOO for an entry on the long side for a day or swing day trade no
Tuesday trades 2007-04-18 04:19:00 I made two sales and one buy today:TZOO popped up nicely today after wandering aimlessly for a week so I sold it. Big Mistake! It rose another $1.50 after I sold. The good news is that I made 4% in two weeks. The bad news is that it could have been 9%.GDP continued to drift south so I pulled the plug. I took a 4% loss on that one. I will be watching it tomorrow, though, because it has now printed the first two days of a possible BOB.Lastly, I really liked the action in TZIX today so I increased my position by 30%. My average cost is now $19 even.I'm now sitting on 29% cash and will be looking to buy some stocks tomorrow. Good luck all...Disclaimer: This is not investment advice. It is merely what I am doing with my own money. Do your own due diligence before investing in any stock. Read more:Tuesday
This Bull has got to be getting tired 2007-04-17 02:14:00 Keep in mind that I don't know anything about anything, but I'm starting to feel like this bull run is about spent. With the NAZ up 9% since March 5th and with earnings season beginning in earnest in the coming days, it just feels to me like the smart money is about to do some selling. The NAZ has rocketed back up to potential resistance in the 2500 area just in time for earnings and, I would think, will need some good news to keep rising. We shall see.So what am I doing in response to my lurking bearishness? I'm buying stocks, of course. I'm not in the business of guessing when the market is going to change directions so I'm just going to continue to look for setups to buy. I'll be paying closer attention to my stops and I'll be taking profits where I can, but I'm not about to go to cash, much less start shorting things left and right. I'm just not equipped to do it.So anyway, I added two stocks today: LHCG and VAR. I found LHCG in my weekly review of a certain 100 hot stock Read more:tired
Ignoring the Warning Signs 2007-04-19 16:40:00 Admittedly, I am still a relative newbie to swing trading. That said, I keep making the same mistake over and over and it is starting to tick me off. I'm talking about the mistake of ignoring the signs of a chart turning over. The example I am going to give is TRA because it is a particularly obvious blunder on my part. I bought TRA on 3/28/07 off a nice bottom reversal which I actually misidentified as a BOB at the time. At any rate, it had four nice red bars followed by a decisive bounce off its MA 50. I bought it at $17 even at the open on the day following that bounce day. It is important to note that I bought TRA with the intention of owning it for days as opposed to weeks, but when it kept rising I gave it a little room to run. (This mistake I am talking about it is a whole lot less heinous, obviously, if your investing time frame is months or years as opposed to days.)Giving the stock room to run is obviously desirable. However, when the run was over I was handed an engraved in
Quick Friday Wrap 2007-04-21 05:10:00 I made some money today and that's always fun. However, the blog portfolio had a few laggards and that's more than a little bit annoying. I expelled one of the laggards but decided to keep a couple of others based more on gut instinct that anything. Here are my trades for the day:SKYF looked mushy on a great day in the market. It banged its head on its MA 50 on Wednesday and then drooped through the end of the week. It was time to go. I sold at $27.19 for a 2.4% gain in a week. Not bad.I added MOGN at the end of the day after it completed a BOB. I bought a smaller helping than usual because I was concerned about its performance today being a case of a "rising tide raising all boats". If Monday looks strong for the stock I may well buy more.And I added CRK at the end of the day. Same exact story as MOGN.Disclaimer: This isn't investment advice. It is merely what I've irresponsibly done with my own hard earned money. Read more:Quick
, Friday
Endless rambling about Google and Yahoo 2007-04-20 18:50:00 Here I go again griping about the relative valuations of Google
and Yahoo
. If it isn't a dead horse that I'm beating, it is at the very least near death:Google's Q1 profit up 69%! Revenue up 63%! An earnings "surprise" of 10%+! The market's reaction? A 2.5% increase in the share price as I'm typing this. Woo hoo! I regularly see more enthusiastic reactions when crappy companies beat by a penny. I can't quite explain the muted reaction, but it is another example of the lack of love the street inexplicably has for this stock. I half expect the market to take back a good chunk of this 2.5% gain over the next few days...Personally, I just want to know what they're going to do with the $12 Billion of cash on their balance sheet. And I'm hoping for something a little splashier than DoubleClick. Hey, why not just buy Yahoo already? Don't laugh, it could happen. GOOG has a market cap 4X that of YHOO and no debt on its balance sheet. And, I actually see their respective strengths as be Read more:Endless
Portfolio Update as of 4/20/07 2007-04-22 16:22:00 There's no denying it, my performance has kind of sucked lately. I've been going through swing trading growing pains since early February and I still haven't developed the feel for this strategy that I'm going to need to consistently beat the indices. I do feel like I made some small strides over the past week or so by reviewing the charts of every holding every night. I think this approach will go a long way toward learning to cut my losses as quickly as possible and in letting my winners run a bit more. At the end of the day, that's the whole game in a nutshell; minimize your losses and maximize our gains. Simple, right?Here's the portfolio as of the close on Friday. If this is the first time you've seen my new reporting format you'll notice that I've added a column for selection method and a column for comments. These two columns are meant to show why I picked a stock in the first place and what I think of the chart as of now. This information gives me a better feel in real Read more:Portfolio
, Update
Portfolio Update as of 4/27/07 2007-04-28 17:14:00 For the second month in a row I've crawled out of a major hole almost back to breakeven. I consider that a consolation prize along the lines of a year's supply of turtle wax.I'm carrying a few dogs in my portfolio at the moment that I will likely swap out of early next week. Also, a slew of earnings releases over the next ten days will ensure some major turnover in my portfolio. I'll be looking for strong setups this weekend to replace my weaker performers.No, I'm not pleased with my year to date returns so far. I'm still learning this whole swing trading bit and still making more mistakes than I'd like. That said, all I can do is be attentive to my charts, aggressively enter good setups, and cut the losers short the best I can. It's always the basics that make or break you, that is for certain.Here's the blog portfolio as of now. (Click on the picture to enlarge):Disclaimer: This is not investment advice. Do your own due diligence before buying any stock. Read more:Update
, Portfolio
A textbook "Return to 4" 2007-04-28 14:51:00 I don't write about every day trade I make. That being the case, I want to be careful not to misrepresent my skills in that area. I have three basic setups I use- return to 4, opening gaps, and BOBs- but I am still pretty undisciplined when it comes to waiting for the proper setup. Because of this lack of discipline I am barely profitable in my brief day trading career.I started sneaking in a day trade or two back in February. Some days I've made several trades and some weeks I've made none. In total I've made 86 trades and exactly 50% have been profitable. Overall, I've netted about 13 beers for my efforts.The first two paragraphs above serve as full disclosure that the VSEA trade I made yesterday was hardly typical. Here's the chart:Like every day trader on the planet, the huge gap up in VSEA had me looking at its chart at 9:45. I started off looking for it to close above the high of the first bar (Trader X's technique), but it quickly started giving back some of its g Read more:Return
BOB: Can we make the screen even better? 2007-04-27 21:10:00 My mentor Marlyn, the discoverer of BOB, is always trying to make the BOB screenbetter
. It's a robust and artfully simple screen "as is" but why not try to find ways to improve the returns?I'm pleased to share an accidental possible improvement that I've stumbled upon. I started tinkering in Stockfetcher a few days ago in an effort to determine if the BOBs that I prefer- ones with really long red bars- are superior to other BOBs. The bad news, as is often the case, is that my intuition proved painfully wrong. The good news is that I may have unearthed an improvement to BOB.First, I ran the standard BOB screen. Using the standard backtesting parameters I use, the following results were achieved:Win Pct: 68%Stocks Entered: 76Reward to Risk: 2.1Annualized ROI: 85%Stop loss triggered 7% of the time Next, given the long red bars that I prefer (or thought I preferred) I started playing with the screen. I tried all sorts of different percentages, but the basic thing I assumed was that eac
Double BOB and Multiple Moving Average Bounce with a twist! 2007-04-27 16:15:00 Although it may not be the stock trading equivalent of a Triple Lindy, I thought this setup was pretty nifty nonetheless. (When admiring this setup please disregard the fact that I am losing money on the trade at the moment. Details, details...)First of all, CWTR showed up on my watch list because it completed a BOB yesterday. I like this BOB particularly because it seemingly bottomed at two different moving averages, EMA 20 and EMA 90:Then, this morning in the third bar, CWTR completed an intra-day BOB with its apparent bottom (at the time) at the same two moving averages. Please note that if I had bought this as a day trade I would have been stopped out in the fifth bar when it fell below the low of the second bar.I've told you what I like about the setup. What I didn't like about it was the fact that I was buying weakness after a BOB. Although it is fun to talk about a "double BOB with multiple moving average support", I would much rather have bought the stock this morning with it Read more:Multiple
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30 second Thursday wrap 2007-04-27 13:37:00 I added to UNT Thursday
because I still like the chart. With earnings due next week it is running up like somebody is expecting something. I won't hold it through earnings, by the way.I sold TZIX for a 3.7% gain in 13 days. Earnings are due Monday and I'm not interested in throwing away my gain.I also sold MOGN because I didn't like the chart. I lost 0.16% on that one. Basically a break-even trade.I knowingly held VAR through earnings Wednesday night and got hammered a bit as a result. Then I violated many people's rule (not mine) by adding to the position yesterday. I bought the stock mostly for fundamental reasons and I'm willing to bet a few bucks that it'll bounce. We'll see.Lastly, MSFT knocks the cover off the ball and as a result is trading up 6% to around $31 this morning. All the way up to where the stock was in mid January. Big deal. I remain a MSFT bear, but I'll wait for signs of a top before I go put shopping again.Disclaimer: This is not investment advice. It
Amazon to the moon! 2007-04-25 17:04:00 Alright, I have a question. Not to overstate the matter, but I think your answer will provide a bit of a glimpse into your world view.Here's the question:What is your immediate reaction when you see a chart that looks like this?I fear what this says about me, but my first reaction was to check the pricing on May put options. And I call myself a bull... Read more:Amazon
Added JST... 2007-04-25 15:20:00 My only trade on Tuesday was to add JST at $20.90. I had added JST to my watch list on Monday evening after reviewing a certain list of 100 hot stocks. I really like this chart for a swing trade, needless to say. I also really like the intra-day chart where I bought this stock. As I said, it was on my watch list pre-open and then it gapped up immediately at the open. It pooped out quickly in the second bar so I watched it for a return to its EMA 4. In the 10:15 bar (the blue arrow) I got the bounce off the EMA 4 and made the buy. See, I do occasionally do something right.Disclaimer: This isn't investment advice. Do your own homework.
Nortel's BOB Fest 2007-04-24 19:30:00 NT keeps showing up on the Blow Off Bottom (or"BOB" if you prefer) setup screen over the past week or so. This fact made me take a closer look at the chart:Assuming NT completes its BOB today, it will have completed three BOBs (identified by blue arrows) in just eleven trading days. This means that nine of the past eleven trading days for NT were either day 1, 2, or 3 of a BOB. That may well be a record.The other two things that struck me about this chart are 1) the fact that the prevailing trend for NT is definitely negative and, 2) the fact that the first two BOBs I point out didn't work out very well. The question is why, when I knew of each NT BOB as it was occurring, did I choose not to buy them?I'm obviously a huge fan of the BOB setup, as evidenced by the fact that at any given time BOBs make up approximately half of my swing trading portfolio. I've used it in every timeframe from 15 minute charts to weekly charts and I find it to be effective the majority of the time. BOBs a Read more:Nortel
Using the charts, but with fundamental hurdles 2007-04-24 12:32:00 One of the things that attracted me to technical swing trading was the seemingly objective nature of it; a good chart is a good chart. Also, given my need to hold many positions and the limited time I have to research stocks, I like the idea of being able to buy a stock without caring about the company's balance sheet or margins or competition or even what specific product they make. Largely, I like this "don't care about the fundamentals" approach for short term buys (a few days or a week) but I'm not comfortable with it for longer term holds of more than a week. (Note: the one tidbit of company specific information I try to always note before buying any overnight hold is the expected earnings date.)Between my blog portfolio and core portfolio (which is basically just money I haven't yet moved to my blog portfolio account), I've found that I'm not comfortable having less than a total of around 20 positions. My challenge lately is that my swing trading scans aren't uncovering en
Made some trades today... 2007-04-23 22:08:00 I know I would be a much better trader if only there were a two day break after every day the market is open. Having had the weekend to do my homework, I always show up Monday morning with a long list of stocks that I might want to buy. If I could just make the time every night for as much stock homework as I do over the weekend I am positive I would make a lot more money with my trading. And all I would have to do to get the extra homework time during the week would be to quit my job (can't afford to do it), lose my family (don't want to do it), or sleep a lot less (physically incapable of doing that). Oh well, I guess I'll just have to keep trying to find ways to work smarter rather than harder.Anyway, today was a good day for my blog portfolio, which rose 0.5% on the day. This gain extends my streak to one consecutive days of beating the major indices.I made some buys today based on all this (supposedly) terrific research I did over the weekend. I'm still working on a separate p
LHCG slammed pre-earnings and a new position 2007-04-30 15:55:00 Another day, another gap down. LHCG is down $2 this morning with earnings due after the close today. The stock looked like crap on Thursday and Friday and I should have had the good sense to sell then rather than waiting until today. Regardless, I'll be out of it before 4PM ET today. This trade highlights my need to adhere more closely to a process and to remove subjectivity wherever possible. More on that later.Speaking of process, I added IN this morning. It showed up on the modified breakout filter that I've so far used sparingly for some reason. I say "for some reason" because this filter backtests beautifully over the past couple years. More on the specifics of this filter later. By the way, IN reports earnings on 5/3 and I plan to have sold it by then. Disclaimer: This is not investment advice. It is merely what one know nothing is irresponsibly doing with his own money. Investing in stocks is risky and could conceivably cause you to lose all your money, your home, your Read more:position
Did some pruning 2007-05-03 03:35:00 I used the rally today to do some selling. Here are the details:With earnings due tomorrow, I cashed out of UNT for a 3.8% gain in a little over a week (annualized return of 155%).I decided not to give JST another chance to roundtrip on me. I sold that one for a 3.8% gain in a week (annualized return of 175%).Approaching its recent resistance and up nearly 3% on the day, it felt like the right time to sell NVLS. I got a nice bounceback in the past week but still booked a small 1.6% loss on NVLS.IN turned into a crappy trade minutes after I bought it on Monday. With earnings due tomorrow I bailed for a 3.4% loss.Right before the close I also added SNE and CNC to the portfolio. SNE completed a BOB today and CNC showed up on the experimental "BOB + Confirmation" screen. And, I really like the look of the chart to boot. Behold:ON EDIT: Did so much selling yesterday I forgot to mention one! With DSX looking pretty squishy once again, I decided to cash out and protect my gain. I made 7.2%
Trying to Minimize Stop Outs (with BOB Filter) 2007-05-02 20:18:00 The more time I've spent backtesting filters on Stockfetcher, the more I've become focused on the percentage of trades that ultimately hit the stop loss order. Based on my experience, it seems to me that the majority of the difference in ROI for various filters can be explained by how often the stop loss order gets hit. If that is truly the case, then one should obviously seek to minimize the frequency of stop outs.This line of thinking got me to thinking about a certain stock picking service to which I used to subscribe. I won't mention the name of the service, but let's just say that they have a bit of a primate theme. Anyway, this particular service has a screen that requires some sort of high volume breakout. On the day that a stock shows up on this screen, the pick is said to have "triggered". Then, on a later date, if and when the stock meets some other criteria related to the price and volume of that breakout day, it is said that the pick is "confirmed". The service tells yo Read more:Filter
Added BGG Yesterday... 2007-05-02 15:36:00 My only trade yesterday was to add BGG on the crossover of both its EMA (20) and MA (50). I haven't bought many stocks based on crossovers but I figured I'd give it a try.Disclaimer: This is not investment advice. It is merely what one know nothing is irresponsibly doing with his own money. Read more:Yesterday
What About BOB?: Anatomy of a Bounce 2007-05-02 04:37:00 I wouldn't personally describe a sequence of candlesticks on a chart as "howlingly funny", but to each his own I suppose. In all seriousness, all I remember about the movie What About Bob? is that Bill Murray's character is howlingly annoying.Please bear with me as I'm a bit obsessed at the moment with trying to further improve the BOB screen on Stockfetcher. In a recent post I wrote about some tinkering I'd been doing with the BOB filter in an attempt to improve upon a good thing. What I stumbled upon was the idea that BOBs perform best on average when the two red bars aren't too terrible. Specifically I came up with an add-on to the standard BOB filter that required that the body of each of the two red bars be no more than a 1% drop. This simple twist resulted in a nice improvement to the ROI of the standard BOB.In response, Marlyn went back to the laboratory and found that tweaking my modification a bit yielded even better results. His change was to require that the first red b Read more:Bounce
A New Month Begins! 2007-05-01 16:40:00 After a putrid month of April, I'm glad that today begins a new month. Unfortunately, I've started off the month of May this morning the same crappy way I ended April. The good news is that my trading has room for improvement. I would hate to have reached trading perfection; where would I go from there?As you may recall, I have been moving money over to my blog portfolio from my core portfolio account at the beginning of each month since March 1st. My plan was to slowly move all my money to this account. Well, I've changed my mind because I'm sick to death of the additional bookkeeping required to track the two portfolio's separately. That being the case, effective today I am going to treat it all as one account for the purposes of calculating monthly returns. This not only saves me administrative time, it will also force me to give my so-called core holdings the attention I give my swing trade positions. (Admittedly, this might not be a good thing as my core holdings have Read more:Month
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