trying out shorts

Well, since this market has been more down than up lately, I've gotten
into a few shorts. BUCY I got bounced out of pretty quick on an up day
at a 5% loss. FCX and TRAK I still have. I can see why people don't
like to short: it's less reward. Also, it seems like this market is
choppy, so everything's cancelling out. I should probably get out of
both of them at a good spot, but then I'd probably be tempted to do
someting more risky.

My last long is AP, which has had some really strong days lately. It's
also #1 stock in the #3 group on IBD.

Another long I'm watching is NTSC. It's setting some new highs on
pretty big volume, although it's avg vol is pretty low.

so this is what a correction is like

Wow, haven't posted in a week and look whats happend. My portfolio
shrank from 10 stocks down to 2:

CTRN-my last half hit a 20% trailing stop and sold at 45.5 (breakeven)
Although now it's back to $50 after earnings.

USB-was lagging down towards my stop, so I sold it for breakeven.

TBBK-dropped way below 50dma. Has recovered some, but not above 50d.

KCS-failed to breakout. Sold at 4% stop. Has continued to plunge below
50dma.

IFO-sold remaining half Monday on HEAVY bounce. It has rallied back
some, but closed the day down hard today after being $2 up all morning.
This was a fun ride. I closed the 2nd half of my stake up 35%! At one
point it was up 50%, a first for me.

DIL-sold remaining half after 2 down days on heavy vol. It has
continued to trend down.

FNSR-closed below 50dma. Still down there.

DTLK-failed to breakout. Still down.

So, as you can see, this selloff has been pretty brutal, although I feel
I've handled it very well. My portfolio is down about $500 from it's
peak, but that really happened before I could get out of most things and
was a consequence of trying to give my winners room. I'm still up 8%
overall, which I think is pretty good for 2 months of trading. And this
correction was a good time to do housecleaning. I'm glad I did.
Everything I got out of was weak and is worse off, except CTRN, which
has rebounded.

However, I'm not totally out, yet. I still have half my AP stake, which
hit a new high today! And it did so on the highest volume since the
breakout. There may be better things yet to come for AP. Also, I'm
still in AOB, currently up 8%. It seemed to have overhead resistance
today and was up in the morning and closed slightly lower, although that
is par for the whole market today.

General consensus is that there's more selling ahead. Should be
interesting to see how the week closes on Friday.

IFO is out of the gate

Up another $1 at open today.  It's pretty much buoying my portfolio, the rest of which is down at open.  Stupid fed meeting this afternoon.

Sank the proceeds from yesterday into doubling my holding in AOB, which was up 6% for me, and buying a stake in DTLK, which was a maui recommendation yesterday.

two more new winners

Man, big movement today by two of my newer holdings: IFO and DIL.

IFO looked to be on the move last night.  It was up yesterday on good volume and then had huge after-hours movement.  Today it broke out on HUGE volume and was up 18%.  It very well could be on the way back up to the $20s again. 

DIL had a really strong day and rose 10% again.  Made a new high again on bigger volume than yesterday and is now up 30% for me.  The beautiful part is that I bought more last Friday when it was up 6% from my buypoint.

I locked in half of my stake in both of these today at 25% with limit sell orders.  I was very tempted to let both of them ride, but I decided that I would stick to my new rule for a while.  If it turns out later that it looks like it needs tweaking, I'll consider that later.

I also scaled out of half of my CTRN holdings on Friday at 56.89 (25%).  Plowed that money into buying more DIL and picking up 1 key of FNSR.

ERS had a climax run last week, followed by 3 days of HUGE volume down days.  It attempted a rebound today.  I am glad I did not try to stay in that stock.  Like they say, you will never time the top perfectly.

Current holdings up over 20%: CTRN, AP, IFO, DIL

ABAX out/AOB in

Oh yeah, and I got out of ABAX after that whole earnings rollercoaster.
It dropped way down before earnings, came back up the following day, and
dropped again the next. I scaled 25% of my shares at an 8% gain and the
rest at a 6% gain. Not much, but I didn't like the look of the high
volume selling days with a lower volume gaining day in between them.

CTRN gapped way up this morning. I put a limit order in to scale out
half my shares at 25%, but just missed it and it fell back a couple
points and is now up 3 for the day. I'm not sure if this is a good gap
or something to be worried about, yet.

I also picked up a small stake in AOB this morning. So unless something
sells out, I'm fully invested right now.

scaling out

So I've read a lot about scaling out of stocks lately. I already
started implementing it. One site I read recommended scaling out of 1/4
of your stock each time it reached a profit level. As an example, they
gave 6%, 18%, and 32%, and letting the last 1/4 ride. That might be
okay if you had large positions, but I think for my account, the
commissions would eat me up if I split it into that many trades.

Instead, I've decided to scale out 1/2 of my shares if I reach a 25%
profit point. As I get bigger positions, I might split it more, but I
figure for me being a newbie, and this being a sideways market, it's a
good way to lock in some profits, but not decrease my winners too much.

I already took profits in AP this way. Also, I got completely out of
ERS on a down day last week, for 25%. Of course, today it's up $5 and I
wish I was still in.

I've also decided to not do scaling in. I was watching maui picks and
buying some test lots of them, then buying more if they went up 3%.
Then I thought maybe I'd just wait and buy in if it went up 3%. I did
that with JOBS, but it turned out to be too far away from the buy point,
and I got shaken out today.

So I do have a couple of remaining test buys in DIL and TBBK. But I've
also done significant buys of KCS and USB.

get a JOBS

Bought some JOBS today, just a test buy. Maui had it back on the 17th,
and it's moved nicely. In fact, it had a breakout day yesterday after a
little handle formation.

And ABAX seems to have weathered the earnings storm and regained all its
lost ground so far this morning.

pleasant dilemma

So, for the first time I have a stock up over 20%--actually 2 of them:
ERS & AP. So here's the dilemma, what to do about it?

Everything I've been reading says that the biggest problem traders have
is selling winners too soon and holding losers too long. So I should
keep them.

But IBD says that if you're a beginner or in a dicey market, consider
selling when your stock gets up 20-25%. So maybe I should sell.

But IBD also says that if your stock goes up that 20% in less than 4-8
weeks, you should consider holding that stock for 8 full weeks because
you might have a really good stock. So I should hold.

I think what I will do is bump my stop up really tight on ERS so that it
will sell at 20% if it falls much. And AP I will let ride and might
even buy more of.

On another note, ABAX has me scared. It dropped 10% today, before
earnings even came out. I had a ~12% up in it, and now it's 0.10 above
my original purch price. Blast. But was that people just trying to
lock in profits, or someone selling that knows something? The #s came
out after close, and they seem phenomenal, and after hours trading was
up. But I'm not sure what the EPS estimates were, or if they beat them
by enough. I'm leaving my 8% stop in there. If it hits, I'm out a lot.
If it moves up, I might buy more.

DW out

DW got stopped out at 4% and it continued to fall another $1.50 from
there. It seems to have found support at the 50dma, though, so I will
watch it and see if it breaks out from there. It is still highly ranked
on the guru list.

Also out is JOYG. Man. This thing sank %10 today, from 70 down to 63.
My stop kicked in at $67, down 8% from my buy. I had 4% on DW, but
thought JOYG was strong, so I left it with 8%.

My new test buy is IFO. Got in it Wednesday. I think I will stick with
the 4% stop, as I'm not sure what kind of market this is.

active day

I added another test buy to my portfolio. DW, which is big on the guru
screeners.

I dropped MXO at open at 9.37. It continued to fall.

Also, my stop on NWRE hit. It dipped below the 50dma and I'm out of it
and $442. But I cut it at 15%, which was stupid, but could have been
worse.

After that housecleaning, I decided to plow that NWRE money into my good
stocks. I doubled my holdings in CTRN, which was up 12% for me. I'm
not sure if I should be pyramiding bigger or smaller as time goes on.
This was bigger, so I guess we'll see. I got some on a dip down to
$48.25

I also upped my test stake in ERS to a somewhat significant one. I
bought some more at $39.80, which it hovered around for a couple of
hours. It ended up closing up at 40.99 and is now up in after-hours.

I'm glad I did these things. I've got to learn not to be afraid of
getting out of a loser. Just because I dumped one or two possibly
prematurely early on, everybody says that this is something you must do
without fail. If I would have stuck to 8% on NWRE, it would been $150
less that I lost.

Also, I think on these test buys, I'm going to hold tighter stops, maybe
4-5%. I don't care to hold them if they don't go up right away.

testing the waters

Well, after watching both JOYG and ERS continue to climb higher and
higher each day, I finally decided to try and get in on them. I did it
in a very risky manner, though, buying after open.

JOYG shot up after open, and as I tried to put my buy order in, it was
already dropping. I bought it less than open, but more than close. ERS
I tried to buy using a stop-limit order, not buying unless it went
higher than a certain price, but then I decided to just buy with a limit
at 37. Well, it took ameritrade a while to cancel/replace my order, and
I'm sitting there waiting for it to execute, but the stock continues to
fall. Finally it goes down into the 35s before starting to come back up
and I bought at 36.37. It closed at 38.16. But I have a 4% stop on it
and an 8% on JOYG, which I consider to be less risky. I wonder if that
has any bearing on anything?

Anyway, the whole plan was to do a small "test buy" on each of them,
set close stops, and then buy more of whichever performs better. ERS
had a worse day, but I bought at a better price, so I may have skewed
that experiment. We'll see.

I'm thinking about dropping MXO at open. It's 5% down, and hadn't been
doing much, until two days ago when it shot to 10, and today when it
dropped back down to $9.37.

NWRE I'm not sure about. I have a stop set below the 50dma, but I
really don't want it to get down there. Again, this was bad timing on
the buy. Well, not really, I bought at $0.10 over the pivot, it just
happened to be the high for the day. Anyway, I'm down 11.5%, and
earnings come out next week. I'm tempted to hold it till then to see
what happens. But that kind of stuff is either very good or very bad.
Of course, I've already got my stop set and will lose only slightly
more, but the potential for upside is much greater.

Of course, this goes against everything I've ever read about selling a
stock that is down. Everything (except Cramer) says to liquidate a down
stock. There is nothing that hoping will do. And holding a loser and
having it come back is even more dangerous because it teaches bad
habits. I need to become more unemotional about these things and less
afraid of being down so much. Seeing that $434 that I would lose is
what's keeping me from doing this.

dropped FTK

I got out of FTK on Tuesday. I only held it a week, and it was
languishing. I wonder if I sold it prematurely? I've read that once
you buy a stock, you should let your system get you out of it: either it
hits your sell stop or you take profits in it. This one I was a little
impatient with, but I did sell it at a 5% loss, which I think is a good
conservative stop.

A part of the problem was how I bought it, too. I bought it intraday
on a spike during a down day, so I was in a hole to begin with. The
lesson there is place a market or limit order before open.

It has rebounded a bit in the last 2 days, but I really want to have
something break out sooner than that after I buy it. There were a lot
of stocks that went up this week that I could have been in if that $
wasn't tied up in FTK. And IBD says to drop your weak stocks and build
up your winners.

missed ERS

Put in a limit order for today for ERS at 33.75. It closed at 34.02 last night, but opened at 35.75 and never bought. Close was 37.65. This stock has just been crazy. I really should try and catch some.

chased FTK up

Saw FTK take off this morning from $27.90 all the way up to 29, which is
approaching a new high. I got a limit order in for $28.90, which filled
on the way back down. Another lesson for setting up your trades
before the market opens.

It's back down to its open price now, so hopefully won't go below that.

Dunno, looks like the market's turning down a little at the moment.

mauitrader rocks

I found a great blog recently http://mauitrader.blogspot.com I will be reading his blog and trying out some of his recommendations.

I have already picked up small lots of 2 stocks that he identified: AP and MXO They are both near a breakout. I will be cutting losses close on these, if need be.

Current holdings: ABAX+2%, CTRN+7%, NWRE-1%, AP-2%, MXO

CTRN up up and away!

Very interesting action by CTRN today. Last night they released some
good earnings numbers after closing at $39.94. The stock gapped up to
open at 43.09 and rose to 46.50 on the day!

Here's what was kinda cool. I bought this stock back on 3/29 at $39.19,
but I only bought 3 shares, or $100 worth. I had read an article about
staging in that recommended for a $500 stake buying $100 first as a
feeler. Then if it goes up 3%, buy $200 more. Repeat once more at 6%.
The idea is that if it tanks, you're only out $100. Anyway, I bought my
3 shares and then put in a buy-stop order at $40.37 (although for 22
shares, so I kinda broke rank with the system there by buying more than
$500 total and not splitting the 2nd piece of the buy).

Well, with this action this morning, my trade entered at open, but it
placed at 43.25 after the gap up past my buy point. The cool thing is
that those 3 shares I had already bring my avg purchase price down to
$42.76 because they were so much lower than the open price today. Cool!

As of right now, I'm up 8.7%. Now I just have to figure out when to
sell this puppy, hopefully after I ride it up a lot more. I'd like to
set a trailing stop, but I think they should probably be set for
15-20%, and I'm not up that much, yet. IBD says that you can expect a
17% pullback, but also that you should never take a loss after having a
profit, no matter how small. So for now I'm setting a stop at $43, to
try and give this thing the room to grow. With the huge volume it broke
out on today, hopefully it will head straight up.

I do think if it hits 20% I will sell. Everything I've been reading
says the biggest mistake people make is selling their winners too soon,
but I think 20% would be a good confidence booster and it's a simple
method IBD recommends for begginners.

Of course, IBD also says that if it climbs 20% in less than 8 wks to
hold another 8 wks, so we'll see. That would be a pleasant problem to
have.

missed JOYG

Man, I sold JOYG a day too soon. Today it's up $3.35 (5.59%)

I don't think I would have got out, either, if I didn't have a stop
order in. It closed higher on friday than it dipped throughout the day
and I was shaken out. So, that's another vote for only basing sell
decisions off of close prices.

Of course, there's always the chance that without a stop order, you
could get bit by a plummeting stock.

I'm going to leave NWRE without a stop for now. ABAX has a 20% trailing
stop. CTRN I have both a stop and a buy stop if it goes 3% over my
puchase price.

so NWRE, we meet again...

...for the first time, for the last time.

That's right, I'm back in NWRE. I decided I was either going to put in
a limit order at $27.54 or a buy stop at 30.60 (the new buy point). I
had them both set up in izone, but then thought what if they somehow
both bought while I wasn't looking? So I decided to wait till open.
Right out of the gate, it was immediately at 30.50, so I put in an order
for a limit at 30.60. It climbed to 30.66, then my order filled and it
dropped down to 30. We'll see how it does today. Initially, the market
looks good. I'm hoping for a lot of volume since it just touched a new
high. That will put it on the IBD front page and get it more exposure.

The theory is that we're trying to get a stock before it busts through
the buypoint and becomes an IBD rec. In the past, we've looked at what
IBD had highlighted and seen that we were either already above the buy
point + 5%, so the reasoning is that if you can get it at the buypoint,
you'll have greater profits and less risk of getting shaken out.

Also, I just noticed that JOYG is up $2 for the day, now that I'm out of
it. But ASVI is still languishing.

no more swing trading for my ira

I sold both ASVI and JOYG yesterday through stops.

JOYG I set a stop at $58.96 above my buy-in of $57.90. The thinking here is to never give away a profit. Of course, it ended up closing at 59.77.

ASVI once it broke back above my purchase price of $34.11, I set a 7% stop. It sold out at $31.92, then closed at 32.22.

This has me once again wondering about the wisdom of stop orders.

almost forgot

I also bought CTRN today with my izone acct. Once I get out of JOYG and
ASVI, I will stop using my IRA acct for trading and just buy mutual
funds or ETFs with it and do all my trading in izone.

Anyway, CTRN bounced off 36 last week, climbed to 42 and fell again
Tuesday. I bought it at $39.19 on a slightly up day. Plan is to buy
more if it climbs 3%, then again if it climbs a further 3%.

Current holdings:
JOYG
ASVI
ABAX
CTRN

Tempted by:
CMED
NWRE