candlesticks

I've been reading a little about candlesticks after hearing Stephen Bigalow of candlestickforum on the radio. I've known about some of the basic patterns for a while, but as I was going over the 12 major ones he mentions, I noticed some of them in my stocks tonight. First, SYX had a bearish engulfing pattern as bears overwhelmed the bulls at the end of the day. Second, ICE has a doji cross at the top of a long runup. These are both bearish reversal signals. I am very seriously considering getting out of both of them at open.

However, I am torn about this because this is probably the opposite of what I should be doing. These are two of my strongest stocks. SYX has run up over 30% since I bought it 3 weeks ago, which IBD says, "If a stock runs up 20% in less than 8 weeks, it should be held the full 8 weeks."

MFW also had big issues today. But it seemed to find support at the 37.00 level and my stop on this one was 10% or 36, so I'm holding tight.

So I'm sitting, waiting. If I were daytrading, I would probably follow the candlestick signals. But I'm willing to hold each of these through a pullback. Once again, I've watched my account peak and retreat this week and I think that's scaring me.

"Throughout all my years of investing I've found that the big money was never made in the buying or the selling. The big money was made in the waiting." --Jesse Livermore