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Posted by Martin September 22, 2011
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Saga continues


The market dropped to my re-entry buy point and I re-entered SPY put position. The market may continue down, or close the gap. I think it will continue down. If I am wrong I will get out of this position quickly.

If you wish to track my trading, check the “Recent buys & sells” in the side bar.

Happy trading!




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Posted by Martin September 22, 2011
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Update on market – more profit taking this morning


It is nice to be correct. The market was poised to a bearish trend and it sure did. In just two sessions we saw big sell offs. I was thinking what would push the market that down? Was it FED? I doubt this would be the only reason.

There are a few items I could find on the internet:

  • China manufacturing index PMI dropped below 50 which is a sign of a contraction of their economy.
  • As we saw yesterday, FED downgraded the US economy and predicts a big slump which will take several years.
  • The “Twist” plan enacted by FED is a BS. Period.

However, from the technical point of view the market was poised to go down anyway. So more profits on downside. And I decided to preserve some of them by selling SPY early morning and now converting my CRM puts into a spread. I sold October $120 strike puts and collected $849 credit (preserving my gains made by holding naked puts). That limits my risk to literally zero and provides a reward of making another $1600 per spread. What a great risk/reward ratio!

Happy Trading!




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Posted by Martin September 22, 2011
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Profit taking again – another $1000 gain at opening


OK, the market opened sharply lower as expected and I decided to take some profits. I noticed that when SPY opens lower with gap, it has a tendency to close that gap during the day. If I am correct, SPY will go up today and close around 116 level, where I will re-enter my put position. If it won’t go up and breaks 112 level (closing price) I will re-enter as well. Let’s see what will be happening circa 15 minutes prior to today’s session close.

Happy trading!




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Posted by Martin September 22, 2011
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Another gloomy trading on Thursday


After the sell off on global markets (Asia and Europe) the US markets are poised to a sharply lower opening. US futures point that the SPY will open at 113 level breaking thru the support of the pennant (or triangle). During the day this gap may be closed, but if the selling pressure during the day will be wild, we may see SPY attacking its next support at 112 level. Remember, it is the closing price which makes signals. If we close below the pennant support, we will attack 112 level this week. If we break 112 level (which I think will happen) we will go to 100 level.

Unfortunately, I am fully invested at this point so my account doesn’t allow me opening another Put position in SPY, which I would definitely do.

Let’s see what’s going to happen today.

Happy trading!




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Posted by Martin September 21, 2011
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I made $1000 in two days trading options


For the first time in my trading career I can see some success. Yesterday I made $630 and today I added another $400 gain to my account. All in two days. Of course all those trades still can turn into a loss, but I am not expecting it much. And if so and those trades start turning, I will sell them and realize those gains.

for the first time, my hard learning brings results and finally I am recovering my account. Hopefully I will be able to sustain this trend and be consistent in trading. I also understand that I will have loosing trades as well, but hopefully I will be able to have more winning trades.

Trading is frustrating however even though you are making money. I could see several trades such as Netflix, which I wanted to short (buy puts), but my didn’t get filled and now it is probably too late to enter. So I have to let it go.

Well, I am recovering my account. I am not out of the forest yet, but it is quite uplifting seeing the progress I am making.

If you want to see my current trades, go to My Holdings page. There you can see that I was able to recover my account from $3200 up to current $5,700. Also check my exited trades to see my portfolio performance (although the table contains recent trades only and not losing ones made earlier this year. But I will add them, so I will honestly show the whole trading/learning process I went through.

Happy trading!




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Posted by Martin September 21, 2011
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FED disappoints and the market is poised to fall


Today, the market dropped hard at the very end of the session reacting on FED’s disappointing announcement. Another news which helped markets to tank was a Moody’s downgrade of financial institutions such as Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo. I think this downgrade was a lot more significant then FED’s announcement.

I do not want to speculate over Moody’s downgrade report and its accuracy on their judgment. However, it looks to be a bit off and it won’t help much at this time. So where are we going now?

If you take a look at today’s trading range, a candle the market created, means a vicious trading and indicating a reversal. An extended bearish candle following a swing high (after a few days of rallying) signals a significant reversal. See similar candles at the beginning of June 2011, July 2011 and at the end of July 2011. All followed rallying market and signaled the top.

Based on that I am expecting SPY reversing and going back down to its support line at the trend line of the triangle (SPY at around $115), which may easily occur tomorrow and we most likely break that line. When we break down through that support at 115, we will go even lower and re-test $110 support level.

I am expecting the market to break that level too, but I cannot say for sure. Thus my target price for SPY is at $110 and then we will see.




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Posted by Martin September 13, 2011
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Stocks ended higher on a choppy day


Like on a swing the stock traded up & down and they ended higher for a second day in a row. Also volume was rising at the end of the trading session. Are we heading back up to $120 level (SPY)? When browsing internet for the news, I am reading that we are not out of the forest yet and we haven’t seen the worst. I am looking forward to it!

Definitely the market (SPY, SPX) ended in the pennant (or also forming a triangle) and there is no signal at this point showing the future direction of the movement. During the day, it broke down several times, but all signals are formed by a session closing price! Not by intra-day movements! And today’s closing price is back within a formation or pattern. So, no direction yet.

This is the time for waiting for a signal. Will the market break the pattern down on high volume or trade upwards on high volume? I do not know it and we have to wait for it. Either way, whatever happens I will jump in and ride that movement as soon as it happens and confirms itself.

On a GLD note, I decided to stay in the trade. Right now, this iron condor will most likely expire worthless, which would bring me back the maximum profit. However, all can happen in this choppy market. If GLD during these upcoming 2.5 days spikes significantly up or down, I may lose money and this trade may turn into a loss. But that’s the game. I hope, it will not move and stay around $180-ish level.

Happy Trading!




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Posted by Martin September 13, 2011
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Up – down – up – down, get used to a choppy trading


Boy, I am glad I decided to close my puts yesterday. Today’s trading, so far, is clearly indicating one thing – indecisiveness. At this choppy trading I will stay out (keeping my already open positions). I need more days to see where the market will go. That’s a part of being patient, which I have struggled many times with and always wanted to be in a trade.

I may also exit my GLD iron condor. If the GLD price remains at $180-ish level, I will make my max profit planned on this trade, but the risk is, it may spike up and the trade may turn into a loss. So shall I take roughly $160 profit or wait? That’s the question?

See all my holdings here.

Happy Trading!




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Posted by Martin September 12, 2011
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Market on a roller coaster

Market on a roller coaster

Interesting trading these days! I entered some bearish trades last week on Thursday by buying puts on SPY and XLE, when both equities were showing weakness and unwillingness to continue going higher. I collected some nice profits on this three day downtrend ($248.5 on XLE and $254.5 on SPY), total profit of $503 within a period of three days! But do not be excited (as I currently am), because Mr. Market can take those profits quickly out as well. At this point I was able to ride it with the trend although the trend was (and still is) quite bumpy. I decided to sell when I saw the last hour rally and after-market trading data confirmed I was right to take the money off the table. Of course, that doesn’t mean anything as well. Tomorrow, the market can go down again and if that happens I may go back and buy puts back to ride it further down.

Change The Way You Trade Forever

The point was that the market was supposed to close under the pennant lower line (see the magenta lines showing the pattern). Well it didn’t happen. The last hour rally kept the market within the pennant. That may be a beginning of a new trend – a bit bumpy, or still a bearish correction undergo.

SPY
Note: this chart is from Sep. 09, 2011

Where will we go? I still think, the market will show more weakness and it will go down. If it breaks this pennant line (the lower diagonal line on the chart) on higher volume, we may see another drop in price which will be equal to the length of the pennant poll (see the perpendicular magenta line to the two diagonal lines). And that translates the drop of almost 100 points! Thus we will go down to $100 level (SPY) or $1000 level ($SPX). I will wait for confirmation and plan on going for this downtrend.

Right now I am not sure which direction the market will go. It didn’t have enough strength (or weakness) to break down (and therefore I decided to sell my puts) and it also doesn’t have enough strength to go higher, so let’s wait!

From this perspective I can see a positive thing on $VIX.X showing elevated volatility. That can indicate more action on the market. However, since it is elevated, it may also point to a situation of calming down the entire market (why? compared to Europe, the US looks like a healthy safety heaven). If you take a look at 2010 correction in the middle of April, it took 18 weeks. Currently we are following the similar pattern. We may be going thru the similar correction and we have just 8 weeks behind us. That’s why I am cautious to say where the market will go and try to enter positions only when I am sure about the next step. As the rule say: if in doubt – stay out.

Happy trading!




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Posted by Martin September 06, 2011
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The market with different signals – how to trade it?


Last night I decided to wait for the market to show me how it would trade. So I waited until the morning for the first five to ten minutes to see. My thinking that since the market would open already 2.5% lower would not provide too much space for further downtrend showed up as correct. SPY opened at $114.39 and since then it was growing and by the end of the day it erased almost all losses. Maybe I could open some call positions, but I wasn’t sure which way the market would go.

And there is a rule – if in doubt, stay aside. So I did.

Right now I can see the market showing a few different signals which is preventing me from opening new positions:

Signal 1 – we are finishing an ABC correction.

Signal 2 – we are forming bearish pennant

Signal 3 – we are reversing the trend and creating new higher highs and new higher lows – a new bull trend is beginning.

Well, which one is correct now?

See the chart below in which I am showing all three possible scenarios:

SPY

I marked the ABC correction with letters. I am also showing the pennant with magenta lines and the new higher highs and higher lows are shown with green and red arrows respectively.

So how to trade this? I still do not know where the market will go and thus I am waiting for confirmation. If the market breaks lower (breaks the pennant) it will be a sign that we really finished the ABC correction and we will continue further down (which I think we will go). If however the market turns back up and continue into new higher highs, I think we may see another bullish trend. So I will be waiting.

Basically if SPY breaks below $114 and $112 levels, we will continue in a downtrend, otherwise we may see a new bullish trend.

The same thing is with Chinese FXI ETF which I am ready to short (buy puts), but only if FXI breaks down below $35.90. If FXI continues up I will wait for the next opportunity.

Happy trading!




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