Vimpel earnings ride

So apparently VIP reported earnings last night (I know, I didn't do my homework).  It opened at $91, down oh, just 3 or 4 dollars from yesterday's close.  Ouch.  Hmmm, I guess this explains the selling off in heavy volume the last 2 days.  But it recovered quickly and had a strong day, finishing at the top of the trading range. 



I shorted a few shares of HOG today, based on candlesticks.  Back on 3/29 it put in a doji in an oversold condition and ran up for a couple of weeks.  Wed was a large bearish day while in oversold stochaistics, so I decided I would try to short it this morning.  I waited 30 mins after open, and it was still down at 60.90 where it had been for the past 15 mins or so.  I thought about putting in a limit order for 61.30, which is what it opened at, but decided that was being greedy, so I put one for 61.00 and it filled later.  Then it proceeded to quickly run up: 61.10, 61.20, 61.30, ... 61.60!  Great.  My stop is 62.38 which is the high from Wed.  It came back down to close at 61.48, only 18c up.  Another doji and still oversold. 



Another short I have started moving today.  My trading buddy has had SRSL for a few weeks.  As I'm reading about candlesticks and looking at the chart, I noticed that it had a bearish engulfing day on 4/5.  So the next day I sold some short at 14.11.  It went down further, but recovered and went positive, which this stock tends to do.  Today it sold off 4%, although it did recover some, so I'm not sure if the 13.50 level will be support.  If it's not, the next level looks like 12.80 and then 11.20. 

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last time I said this the market tanked

but the solar stocks are on fire again. Although they look like they may be topping. TSL, SPWR, and USU look like they may be about to reverse. FSLR just broke out, but it didn't show strength today, going up less than yesterday in a tight range on higher volume. That looks like churning, possibly. And after being one of the only stocks to recover quickly and go up significantly during the big sell-off, WFR has stalled, although it could be about to break out from its narrow range.

This is not a good sign for this rally. As IBD said in the Big Picture tonight, solar seems to be the only group making any decent breakouts since the rally. If they start to fail, what does that leave?

bought some OFI

I bought a small portion of OFI today. It broke out to a new high of a nice pattern and actually has decent fundamentals, for a cheapie stock.

I bought it with a limit order at around 11am. I've been re-evaluating my buy strategies after hearing from 2 different sources that you should wait til after the opening volatility settles down before you buy. First source says to wait til 1-1.5 hrs after open, and then not to buy if the markets are down or if the group of stocks you're looking to buy are down. Then, a book I'm reading (Rule the Freaking Markets) says to wait 1/2 hour after open and then not to buy your stock unless it is higher than whatever it opened at. And if your stock gaps up and stays up through that first 1/2 hour, that's a powerful sign, which is what OFI did today. The reason he says to wait is that frequently a stock (and the entire market) will gap at open from pent-up demand of pre-market trading and market orders that have queued up all night. MMs run the prices up or down filling these market orders at great prices for themselves. After all this fills, the market or stock fades back toward equilibrium.

I can see the point. I would prefer to do market orders the night before and let it fill. I'm looking for a bigger swing than a few cents, but still I don't want to be taken advantage of. Plus, I like the first argument that you want to wait and see what the market does before you buy. No sense getting in on a day when the whole market might be going down and your stock has to fight that much harder.

The downside of waiting is that then I'm watching stocks intraday and I start to second-guess myself and chase stuff. Although I didn't today. I had one other order that didn't fill and I let it go. I put a fluorescent green stickie on my monitor that says "There is ALWAYS another stock."

I'm starting to study candlesticks quite a bit lately, too. There are some pretty decent built-in scans at stockcharts.com and I've been following them and trying to apply what I've read.