After looking through charts yesterday, and determining where I wanted to focus in the coming days, META was at the top of the list. Here’s what I had yesterday in my analysis:
This had been weak for a long time, but bottomed out in early November. Since then, price has been pushing up fairly strong, and today, is up against some resistance from late September – early October. If this can break that area, around $145, this could run to ~$155. I might look for longs on the hourly chart immediately here tomorrow
This morning, price gapped down, but quickly pushed up from there. I thought I had missed the move, just looking at the percentage change, but when I actually looked at the chart, I hadn’t yet. I ran some numbers, and they were largely good, there’s one area of resistance I’m a little worried about before my target, but it’s a fairly minor area.
The end of the day yesterday showed a nice high-base in this, and the gap down to the lows of the base and subsequent push up, looked like a nice high-base/bull pullback to me, 2 bullish signs. When I got to my platform, unfortunately, with the spread, the ask was already above my desired entry price, but only by a couple of pennies. I set a market order so I could get in right away, and now I’m waiting for 1R+!
Entry – $143.63
Target – $150.00
Stop – $141.50
R:R – 2.99
Entry – $143.63
Exit – $141.40
Price looked strong in the first couple of hours after triggering me into the trade, but never quite reached 1R. The highest price got was 141.60 which was about .6R, so I never moved my stop. After that, price hovered roughly around my entry, dropping about 1/2 way to my stop-loss by the end of the day. The last hourly candle of the day had a long wick bottom, though, so I thought things still looked promising
When I got to the chart this morning, the premarket movement had price below my stop, I hoped things would push up before the open, but unfortunately, they didn’t, and I was stopped out for a full loss.
Looking today, the candle I entered the trade on kind of ruined the base pattern that I was trading. I justified it, but, really, it might not have been the greatest idea. I think I panicked a little, thought I was going to miss a big move, and put that above everything else. I didn’t even do a full analysis that morning, just, essentially, took a shot at META based on the prior day’s analysis.
That said, not every pattern is going to be the prettiest/easiest to discern; I just have to continue to make the best decisions I can make with the information I have. I could’ve given myself more information yesterday, but I also don’t want to succumb to analysis paralysis. That’s the joys of trading haha. Overall, I can’t be too mad at this trade, it’s above moving averages on 3 time-frames, has been trending up for over 2 months, and certainly appears to be building energy before making another move up. This could be the highest it’s going to reach before returning to a down-trend, but more likely, I think I just mistimed this.
I also might want to not trade bases in longer time-frames, and just stick to retests and pullbacks, I feel like I have more success with those, and get faked out a lot of the time with bases — I’ll try to keep that in the back of my mind. Or, if I do play a base, play it tight, use the bodies as the stop point’s rather than the wicks, which would keep my risk lower, which would allow me to move my stop to profit quicker. It’s definitely a more nerve-wracking strategy, but one that should work out on the hourly chart.
Again, that’s trading, though, and once I get to a place where I can put out several orders at a time, and not have to try to find the “best” thing I can find each time I trade, only more success will be had. Keep swimming, keep learning and be prepared because it’s all coming!