I traded TMO yesterday off the 15 minute charts. It certainly wasn’t pretty – I was in negative territory for much of the day. I almost couldn’t believe it when it actually hit the Fibonacci extension late in the day. I sold a little over half when it hit the extension and let my CyberTrader alert take me out of the remaining shares just before the close for 2.6R. It’s trades like this that let me know I’m doing the right thing by putting a bigger dose of patience in my stop strategy. Why save the occasional 0.5R when it guarantees I’ll miss out on trades like this and bigger ones?

Oh yeah, I made a little over 2R on a partial fill in FSLR on Wednesday.

The most painstaking part of keeping a trading journal of your trades is the fact that you make your trades with your broker and then you have to go and enter them in your journal. If you trade frequently, this process is painful, time consuming, and error prone.

I believe a trading journal is the most important weapon a trader can have and it should be easy to enter trades into. That’s why we’ve created a plugin for CyberTrader that will do 95% of the work it takes to enter your trades into your journal automatically.

I’ve been using the plugin for a few weeks now and it saves me at least 15 minutes every day that I trade and it’s not subject to my human error. It saves me more and more time the more I trade. This way I can spend more time improving my trading and less time doing data entry.

If you’d like to test this plugin and you’re a StockTickr Pro user, you can download it here.

And don’t worry, IB users, we’re busy developing IB support as well. Here’s a screenshot of the plugin in action. If you’re not a StockTickr Pro user yet, you can sign up here for a free trial.

I didn’t take any trades today. I almost did in ADI, but I was spooked by the big round number of 40 that was looming overhead and provided serious resistance earlier in the day. Zoomie wasn’t scared and took the trade for a nice gain. Here’s the chart:

I had a good day in the markets today (+9.3R). The market opened lackadaisically, so my gap list was reasonable to start out with. I started off trading a breakout play in FRPT for 6R. I’m still using a smaller size on these breakout plays, so this wasn’t a huge trade in terms of dollars.

The next trade was a nice inverted hammer off the OR low in NYX. I closed half at the fib extension and the remainder was stopped out at 87.70 or so just before 1PM. Here’s a chart:

Next was BIIB which formed a nice hammer on the 30 minute chart. Kind of like WNR the other day, my newfound patience paid off for 2.3R thanks to that last candle of the day.

The last trade was HANS which I took for a 1R loss. I traded it against the 6th candle on the 30 minute chart. This one didn’t trigger until two candles later, which should have been a warning sign. I hadn’t taken a play like that in some time. I’ll have to look through my charts and see if a play like this has ever worked out for me. Here’s the chart:

As you probably know, I’m a big fan of interviews. I also never miss an episode of the TraderInterviews.com podcast. That’s why I was so honored to have Tim, the founder of TraderInterviews, ask me to do an interview there. It will post on the site next Monday right after Tim’s interview with Alan Farley, but you can listen to it now with the direct link.

I really enjoyed doing the interview and getting to know Tim a bit during the process. Interestingly enough, Tim started the Trader’s Expo back in 1999. It’ll be in San Diego in June. (You going, Esto?)

I talk a lot about how I trade, how I started daytrading (thanks, Mike!), my Trade-Ideas custom app, and a little about some tools I’ve created for my eSignal charts (which I hope to do a screencast on soon). I also mention this StockTickr report which really opened my eyes and helped me figure out where I often lost money and why.

I gave props to TraderMike, MaoXian, and HCPG. I wish there would have been time to give credit to all the others who’ve lent a hand along the way.

Another gap reversal in the QQQQs. These kind of days are so difficult to trade – a lot of choppiness out there. I used the time to crank out some new StockTickr features. I’ve let far too many features queue up without announcing them. I’ll start announcing them soon.

I didn’t take any trades today, but here’s one in SMSI that would’ve been great. I was (again) feeding my face when this one setup.

I took one trade today in ADI for -1R:

It was a difficult day overall with the market gapping down and then trending up most of the day. Here’s a chart of OSG that would have worked out really nicely. I’m sure this one will appear on Trader-X’s site later.

Also, Trade-Ideas has released a beta version of their Trade-Ideas Pro software. One juicy new feature that I can’t wait to use: an exclude list. I’ve bugged suggested this to David over at Trade-Ideas a few times – glad to see it’s made it into the software. I do see one way I would improve that new feature. Maybe I’ll implement it in my own Trade-Ideas app.

I made two trades today, momentum style. There were no dummy/fib trades that caught my eye. I traded WFR for a loss and PCU for a gain. My trade in PCU was the first time I’d ever scaled into a trade and it worked out ok. It’s a little odd calling it “scaling in” because I really thought of it as two separate trades that happened to be in the same stock.

I ended the day up 6.88R, but with my position size about half of what it normally is my profit wasn’t as great as I would have liked. This feels a lot better than the start of the month which was pretty ugly.

AMZN would’ve been a nice trade yesterday and it’s one that I almost took. It seemed too far away from the 5EMA, but that third candle was a strong hammer on the 80.9 fib retracement.

Maybe there will be some opportunities today with the S&P making new highs.

I had one trade today if you can call it that. I had a stop limit order to buy ENER at 36.76. When the price got to 36.75, the ask price apparently went to 36.76 for a split second and my order executed at 36.75 and the price never actually reached 36.76. ;-( I hate when that happens.

Here’s the chart review if you’re interested.

No dummy/fib trades today.

I will be out tomorrow, so have a good weekend everyone.