today – day trade that shouldn’t have been – bkn
BKN: Entered a position in Bradken today – and exited an hour or so later. Exited short of stop loss, for a 3% loss.
bkn - 5 min chart today
This is the 5 min chart of the days activity. You can see where my entry was triggered, all according to the script. Enter on a pullback to a trend line support. All standard stuff. Then the price collapsed and I got a price warning – so I took an exit (also marked). Volume was high today – see in the daily chart following. Look at that big black candle – I bought right into that.
Bradken - daily
So – a bad trade?
I exited short of my planned stop loss – but is it because I got gun shy? I have done 5 losing trades in a row, so I am in the process of tightening my stops, and now need to be more careful with my stock choices. These price drops are coming a bit more frequently this month, and is affecting my hitherto stella performance (!). Looking at the volume, penetration of the short term trend I had selected arbitrarily to try to bounce from, I am happy that the entry was ok – if a little risky. The exit was, well, early – but given the volume the sentiment looks to have moved against me. Go with the heart bail. Looking at the days close – I was going to be getting out tomorrow anyway as this is a lower low than the past two – pretty definitive I’d say.
If not clear from the above – this was supposed to be a standard 2-10 day trade – not a day trade as thats not my thing.
So – not entirely with the plan. Not a good trade. Not a bad one. A reasonable discretionary trade – a bad system trade.
What is it they say – anyone can make money in a bull market – but I seem to be jumping with the bears this month. Trading activity is down – losses are up. Anyway – repeat the mantra – trade the plan. Its just another trade. Go on – get over it. Be ready to pull the trigger again tomorrow.
tradersams blog 
Hi, enjoy your posts, do you go shorts on asx stocks by any chance?
Hi Mike – Glad you enjoy the reading.
As for shorts, I spose the answer is “I did”. When it was easy, I did a few shorts through my regular broker – then the ASX banned it. Now the bans lifted, but my regular broker still has it banned.
I have a CFD account, and I can guess that I may start shorting shortly if the change in sentiment becomes more apparent.
What I actually find is that I tend to pick a side – go long or short, and my portfolio takes that bias. Right now I have been bullish so my only short is an index put. If the market tends more bearish – you’ll see me start to play a bit to the short side. This is all a side effect of me trying to pick trades that I don’t have to think about too much in my daily scans. My mind gets to jump less hurdles.
So the answer is YES, but not much of late.
Thanks for stopping by,