Archive for the ‘chc’ Tag
today – chc
chc close
CHC: closed the position today, for a small 4% loss – not exactly according to the plan either.
I have noticed the general ‘positivity’ of the markets over the last few days, and in my chart scan tonight I noticed 2 things:
- A number of my shares are under performing the market in the last 5 sessions
- A number of them have the same pattern for the last few days – that which can be seen in this CHC graph.
If the market is taking off , and this is only known with hindsight, I appear to be backing a few shares that haven’t taken this last weeks spurt. Trimming CHC is a move to limit my exposure to the particular graph formation you can see above – even though it hasn’t actually hit the stop loss.
So, I came to a couple of conclusions over the weekend – if the markets are taking off, I need to focus more on which shares I trade (ie: limit the number of open positions) and target the moving parts of the market. Over the last few months, and obviously the two months I have been documenting some of my moves, I have been discretionary trading – going off ‘hot spots’ in the market from a heat map, combined with general chart formations. I must say its been treating me well – the last few months have nearly got me back my losses for the last financial year (no – not since the start of the dive yet!).
When System A (my own coded system in c++ so I don’t need to think) is running, it manages my number of positions to an extent, so issues like that above don’t happen too often when the bulls are running.
On another note – System A scan on the weekend – still nothing!
today – cpb – updates on open positions
Filed under: discretionary | Tags: aru, chc, cpb, mcc, mml, okn, open
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Campbell Brothers opening
CPB: I set a trigger to enter Campbell Brothers over the weekend, on entry into the rectangle you can see in the attached diagram.
Campbell Brothers has been in an uptrend over the medium term, however ranging over the shorter term. The item of interest that peaked my interest in this share was the bounce off the upwards trend line, which I am looking for a continuation of.
So, I have a couple of trades that have been open for a few days, hopefully indicative of some trends setting in – not that I’ll know till I can look back and know. The writeups below are brief updates on a few of my open positions. you can find the entry conditions by looking of the relevant tags on the menu.
ARU: Only opened recently, strong increase on open – definite rejection of a higher high, but no stops hit.
aru
CHC: Charter Hall group, again only recently entered, and signs of stalling as the overhead resistance is approached. Keep a close eye.
chc
MCC: Continued to rise nicely since opening. Today looks like a push into, and maybe through upper resistance. Keep the trailing stop loss, keep watching.
mcc
MML: Medusa Mining also rose nicely. Another one to hit upper resistance, lets see if we press through. Hold position.
mml
OKN: Pyramided in to this trade based on the sudden increase in price, and the share promptly declined soon after. As it stayed above the increasing trend line I stayed in. In some cases I would have exited on the fall through the ATR based stop loss (brown line), however based on the strong uptrend I held in using the trendline as the ultimate stop due to the sudden spike which I missed capitalising on as I was working on end of day prices.
okn
For anyone interested – one more week to get into the ASX sharemarket game. I’m considering myself, but I don’t know if I can afford any more time, given I post this blog, consider my trades and hold down a job!
For tonights reading I trawled through some content from Tradergav – another Aus trader with a blog. I read his discussion on a tweets conversation that he has here which is around the risk / reward metrics. Since doing discretionary trading I have not been tracking my statistics as carefully as I was up to a year ago, as I normally tracked these for my System A (which had no triggers this week – again!) and other mechanical systems I have toyed with. Maybe thats my next project, as I have done enough in the last year to give some sort of finding. I had one -3R trade from memory last year and that hurt. If I go past -2R I pause trading and ‘have a good hard look at myself’ to determine why I ended up there. I must say I haven’t beaten 8R in over a year though, and you do (well I do) like to get one every so often, both for financial reasons, as well as to help with the psychology of this.
Signing off,
today – cey – chc
Another big day for the ASX all ordinaries.
cey - todays entry
CEY: Trigger on ASX fired on opening and placed me straight into the market. This was on my list based on the consistently strong volume over the last few months, combined with the size of the gap to the next resistance level.
CHC: good white candle today, so I’m in this one again. Better luck this time maybe? Well – just follow the plan.
General comment for the evening: I am interested in twitter, I use it – I post my trades via tweets so that I can justify to myself that I am sticking to my plan and to others that I’m not making this up. I am interested in some of the add on services to twitter (stocktwits anyone?) , but am concerned at the concept at sharing my passwords with anyone – now go read this article about the hacking of twitter. Having been a computer security consultant for a significant part of my career this concerns me. Anyway, what can you do? C’mon twitter, use some better practices. Individual users making errors is one thing – but companies?
Off for a sleep,
today – mml – chc
Market still choppy and a bit ugly at the moment. Driving me out – how long this lasts is anyone’s guess.
Before getting into tonights commentary, I have to comment on this article in the Wall Street Journal. Fancy that – we have price volatility and there is a view that traders should be stopped – I wonder if there will be more talks like I heard a while ago referring to retail traders effectively losing the right to buy, and therefore leaving all the transactions to funds to manage. Hmmmm…. me thinks I could comment on those with vested interests maybe trying to protect their patch. Oh well – maybe this discussion will just go away.
chc 9-7-09
CHC: exited today after falling through stop loss for a 13% loss. Looking at this trade I had a number of opportunities to exit the trade that I did not take – and the unfortunate bit is that I would have been in a better financial position if I had. It was clear the price was falling on the big black candle the week after I opened the trade, after which the price has declined every day. I do note however that the price has not fallen as fast as my other positions that were closed out earlier.
The actual error I made in this trade is however my exit today. The stop loss was actually triggered the day before yesterday, and I failed to exit cleanly… a slow exit….I thought I might be able to get an extra cent so put my sell order in at a level that was never filled – leading to a worse position to exit from today.
The learning -> when the stop is hit, take it – don’t second guess it.
mml 9-7-09
MML: entered a long position in Medusa Mining today. The reasons for entry are:
- looking for the gap a couple of days ago to become support
- share price is at all time highs
- my ATR based exit formula seems to be tracking to the price fairly nicely
- volume has been healthy over the last few months
Note – all my entry and exit prices are sent on twitter as I note that they have taken place. Sometimes I don’t know if a transaction has taken place as I don’t know until I get email confirmation, due to the fact that I can’t observe the intraday prices in general.
Any queries of comments to me, feel free to post…
friday – aqp – chc – fmg – pna
Filed under: discretionary, System A | Tags: aqp, chc, fmg, pna
Leave a comment Friday was a busy day for me at work, and as I got home friday night, I found my portfolio had changed shape due to some of the trades I placed earlier.
AQP exit - UGLY!
I closed my position in AQP for a 20% loss – OUCH! And the graph is ugly. When I look at it now, after the pain of the loss has past, the price was clearly ranging. When the share went through my stop loss at ‘1’ I should have exited immediately – instead I held thinking it might recover… big mistake… Never second guess the plan when its in place, take the exit signal when it comes, and re-enter if conditions suit. Now to go write that out 5 times! Anyway, learn from it – and move on.
CHC entry
Entered a long CHC position today, and as entries go, I am happy so far. Pushed through what looks to me like the upper line of a flag on Thursday close, and rose all day friday – and look at the volume.
Having done this for a while, I came to my own personal view some time ago that I can pretty much buy anything – as long as I manage my exit well. I can get out with a small loss if I enter badly – but keep it to a small loss. That said, I’m always happy with an entry like the one in the picture… I’ll see how this plays out.
Entered a long FMG position. On close the days trade looks like a spinning top which is disheartening, but does not trigger an immediate exit. Will keep a close eye.
Exited a long PNA position, but I’ll write this up when I fully exit, as I didn’t fill the order.
System A: Ran my scan – which is designed to run on weekends – still comes up blank! It still doesn’t like this market.
Final thought for the week – this was an active week, more transacions than I usually like to make in a week, which is making the management of the positions more time consuming. And it appears that even the professionals struggled with making anything of this week – read what The Kirk report had to say – he’s expecting a bit more to work with next week.
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