Equities are on a mini up-move so far this year, but over the last couple of days has been basing. Yesterday, price started strong, but ended up pulling back and being slightly down on the day. Today, futures are up, but they’re not above yesterday’s highs. I could see a down-move at the open, then a rally for the rest of the day — the market just opened, it gapped up some, but isn’t rocketing in either direction….
On one hand, I want to look for longs today. I’m open to taking shorts, of course, but right now, my main focus would be longs. The issue is: Do I believe in the “Long” play enough to take a swing trade? As with my last trade — It ended up gapping down below my stop loss and I took a much larger loss than I intended. That said, it was only one trade, and not nearly enough for me to tell whether it’s a viable strategy or not, but I’m worried about it happening again. There can be no fear in trading, though, and I know my patterns and my numbers and my risk profile, so I have to continue to have faith in my knowledge and skills and instincts and make the best decisions that I can make with the information I have.
I will look at swing trades again today, ideally longs, but I’m open to shorts. The lowest time-frame I’ll look at will be the hourly chart and DO NOT play bases in the opposite direction of the prior move! Let’s see what’s available
Initially, my screener didn’t pull in many stocks at all, so I thought I wouldn’t trade. I refreshed it and a few more came through, one of them being Netflix. It’s been pushing up so far this year and was on a bit of a pullback this morning, that I thought could break to the upside. I ran numbers and liked them, but when I went to pull the trigger on the trade, I saw that price had already pushed above my entry. It was frustrating, but shortly after price dropped VERY strongly, so I guess I’m glad I missed that one.
I’ve got a few others that I’m going to look at — swing trades — that I’m going to analyze below, but before I do that I just want to call out that this is another scenario that proves out that I need to be setting up my trades at the beginning of the week. Especially swing trades. Clearly, there’s no path for that on Sunday’s, so, especially with the Blog, that will probably be my primary goal on Monday’s going forward.
XOM – Long – This has been pushing up since late September of last year, though it peaked at the end of November and pulled back somewhat sharply. Since then (early December) it’s been on a steady rise back to the highs, and is now sitting just off of the highs it made in November. If it can break those highs, this could be a great candidate, but at the same time, I’m not actually seeing a pattern that I’d be comfortable trading. Maybe if this bases for a couple of hours on the 4h/1h charts, it might be worth it. I’ll revisit if I don’t like anything else
OXY – Long – There’s a lot going on here. It’s been very choppy, but mostly pushing up since last March, but it’s been a slow move with, like I said, a ton of choppiness. This morning, price spiked at the open, and came up to a fairly strong resistance area. If it can break that area and provide a nice pattern to buy in to, this could be a good trade. I’ll keep my eye on the hourly chart for something to form, but until then, I’ll hold off
SQ – Long – Overall, this has been pushing down since mid 2021, so I think I’m just going to let this go. It bottomed out last December and made a nice spiked from there, but pulled back to the support/resistance area that was made between October and November of last year, where it hovered until it started pushing up again at the beginning of this year. It’s now near the highs it made after pushing up in November and that’s proving to be a fairly strong resistance area that’s held up back in September, August and July, just from what I’m seeing here. The choppiness gives me pause, but the resistance area break gives me hope. I’ll keep my eye here on the hourly chart for a clear pattern, and I’ll take a small position size trade here if it proves out
SLB – Long – This, strangely, has been pushing up since the start of Covid, and has been steadily strong the entire time. Sure, there’s been some fairly deep pullbacks within that time, but overall it’s been strong. Price largely moved sideways starting in October of last year, but since the beginning of this year, has been pushing up again. Price had a decent spike up last week, a couple of up-days that didn’t quite break that high, but then pushed up and broke the high this morning. As of right now, there’s a bit of a pullback, so hopefully that’s the pattern I need to get in to this trade I’m going to look at the hourly chart and, hopefully, run numbers and enter an order here