Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Here are today's trade journal entries:

1. 7:41am short -2.25 28800 vol chart. Stop out on immediate bar reversal.
2. 10:16am long +4.50 target
rode this cowboy all day and exited at close of regular session +3.00. Holders would have resulted in a breakeven from the indications of the overnight globex session. Great example why stops below confluence are there not only to protect you but allow the markets volatility to do its thing.

Interesting note was that our business continunity/emergency response plan which was developed in 2009 and thankfully never implemented was needed on the 2nd day of the new trading year. Computers are a funny thing and our new terabyte chip that never freezes did just that. Stops were in place with phone in hand to the broker (thankfully the trade was thru the always-available Infinity brokerage!) all was resolved in time for a 3:58 flatten. From a risk perspective, the controls were in place. We had the backup plan and our bracketed stop in place. The risk was our inability to move our stop near the close (we had at 2.5 point winner at the time). All worked out and in fact may have allowed us to hold on a bit longer for some extra meat off the bone.

Looking at some initial weakness after that sharp run up during the last hours and suggest watching for a short in the early part of the overnight session.