Updating on 1/18
My write-up from the day of the trade:
This has been pushing up since November and made a decent breakout this morning. Currently on the hourly chart, there’s a bit of a base, so it looks like a great candidate, but how many trades can I realistically put out there? Eventually ThinkorSwim is going to say I don’t have enough buying power for the order, but I like this too. In the recent history, looking at the 1h chart, the breakout spikes are followed by long stretches of not much or pullbacks, and there was a breakout spike a couple of hours ago, so I think I’ll hold off. I think I’m talking myself out of it because I already have 2 orders out there, but I do already have 2 orders out there and I am limited by my account size and parameters. I’ll set alerts to let me know if I was on to something, but other than that, I’ll hold off.
Like I mentioned, this was high basing and looked good. My other two orders that I had on this day both moved in the opposite direction, taking out my stop before ever getting close to my trigger, so I cancelled them and put this trade on. I figured with this tight of a base off of such a strong move up, this would be a great long play.
Entry – $53.80
Exit – $52.69
Price pushed up again near the end of the day, took out the highs of the base and triggered me into the trade just before the end of the day. It being a swing trade, I didn’t think much of it as I planned to hold for a couple of days. The next morning, though, price had gapped down fairly significantly, taking out my stop loss and then some, for a 2R loss.
Honestly, I’m not sure what to say about this one. Overall, it looked very strong, and the high base was nice and tight. I genuinely think I followed my rules as well as I could have with this trade, it’s just one that happened to not work out. That’s trading.
I have to remind myself that “that’s trading” too, because I’ve been discouraged since this. I’ve been trying to do more swing-trading since my account balance is low enough that I’m still under PDT rules, but if I’m going to take a 2R loss because of slippage overnight, I don’t want to do it. On the other hand, what if slippage happened in my favor? And I opened that day at a 2R gain and it went up from there? Again, that’s trading. I need to not let one trade affect me as much, no matter how hard it is or how new of a strategy I’m attempting