i have moved the blog

i decided to move this blog over to a different blog program. you can find the site at: http://www.the52weekexperiment.com

sorry for any incovenience!

marketmillionaires — harness the power of a community

so this post continues the tradition i started last weekend of writing on something that doesn’t depend on the markets being open. last weekend it was the site SocialPicks, and now this weekend it is the forum marketmillionaires. you’ll notice that i actually link to the site from my blogroll which goes to show how much respect i have for it. there are a lot of stock sites and forums out there, but i gurantee that none are filled with the kinds of people and information marketmillionaires has. the founders and mods of the site do the best they can to create and maintain an environment that seeks to help each investor who visits. and you know they have succeeded because every regular user seeks to try to maintain that environment. novices can freely ask questions and within a couple hours will have a ton of great and useful responses from a variety of users. pumpers are not tolerated. personal attacks on other users are not tolerated. but debate and due diligence run freely across the site. you’ll witness a variety of different traders, techniques that work and the trials and tribulations of plays that fail, but the one common thread among all of the users is the sense of community that the founders created and that every other user fosters. i visit a host of different stock sites and forums daily, but i only call one my home…and that’s marketmillionaires. so, stop by — most of us usually hang out in the hot investment tips and stock picks section.

8th play – confirmation: back on track

balance: $2407.47

bought 63,000 shares of CHDT on 2/6/07 @ .023 and sold 63,000 shares on 2/7/07 @ .028 for a profit of $284.88 and a gain of 19.47%

new balance: $2692.35

total gain after 8 plays (%): 169.24%

this was an easy and straight-forward bounce play.  interestingly though, i watched it consolidate for forever!  first i told orange, “it’s going to form a cup and handle and bounce!”  it didn’t.  then i told him, “it’s gonna be done consolidating any time and run up.  make sure you’re watching!”  weeks and weeks of consolidating went by and i just watched the ADX trend further and further down.  there were times when i almost jumped in, but decided my trigger wouldn’t be until it broke .037 and it got up to that point but never broke — so i waited and waited.  finally it broke the side-ways trend!  but the wrong way…so i just laughed and waited some more until it looked to be oversold and showed signs of bouncing.  all stocks go up and all stocks go down, so it’s all about timing as i pointed out in one of my first posts.

well, it finally formed a doji and then a hammer, so i waited until the next day to see if buyers were ready to jump in.  they were, myself included.  the indicators looked to be rebounding from oversold and volume was lower than it had been the last couple days but was still fairly high against the average volume and probably meant that most of the sellers backed off.  i liked the direction the indicators were heading on the 3-month chart so i opted to stay in over night.  interestingly, after the market closed, another trader pointed out that the 3 and 5 day charts didn’t look so hot for a run to continue today.  he was completely right in analyzing the charts, but i was already in and i felt that this had more room to run (a gut feeling).  so it turned out we were both right because the charts didn’t look great, but to my delight it ran some more.  i opted to sell out about an hour before EOD because the MMs were playing games with the b/a earlier and i thought they might do it again at EOD and have it finish looking bearish.  well, i sold at the HOD which was good but it finished in a bullish white marubozu candle and closed at the HOD — you can’t win them all i guess.  nevertheless, it was a simple and quick nearly 20% so no complaints from my end. 

The Saga that was SWSH

Okay, best to maintain frequency. The play was SWSH. I got in too late and stayed too long. Damage was minor- in at $1.31, out at $1.24 for abt 5% loss. Still hurts my pride, tho. By EOD Tuesday’s macd was teetering down, and stoch was definitely southbound. Enough already. Quanted it Monday night and didn’t like that picture either.

So, a couple resolutions. More quant, less technical analysis. Do what you know best. Do what you trust the most. For me, that’s quant. Second resolution, definitely looking at some plays for less than 10% “certain” gain. It’s simply a dull fact of life in my chosen market slice that 10% or more is highly unusual in one day. And I just don’t trust the market for more than one day at a time. That “slice” for me is NO PINKS, and around $.50 to $1.25.

At first, quanting is not nearly as easy as TA. You have to study one stock intently, like a chemist trying to crack a molecule. Then, once you crack it, you OWN it, for awhile at least. Only problem is, you may then have to wait awhile for it to get hot. On the plus side, however, once you’ve got a dozen or so like these, one of them’s bound to get hot at least every few days. I had a bunch- I mean dozens and dozens- but that was before I changed to a NO PINKS policy and upgraded to higher prices. So I’ve been kind of lamed so far in this Experiment, now with only 25% total gain over start balance. No more. From now on we play this MY way. You want to hear something weird? Tonight I quanted a stock that says the sum of OHLC divided by 16 is almost ALWAYS .28-.32 . So at any time of day I can make a crude assessment of where the day is going. That’s my kind of game.

7th play – back on track?

balance: $2185.42

bought 12,000 shares of RHWC on 2/1/07 @ .122 and sold 12,000 shares on 2/2/07 @ .143 for a profit of $222.05 and a gain of 15.02%

new balance: $2407.47

total gain after 7 plays (%): 140.75%

well, it looks like i may finally be back on track! RHWC was a great one day play, which unfortunately i haven’t really had so far. it hit a bottom and quickly started to show signs of bouncing in intraday charts on feb 1. when it looked to make a bullish close i bought in and it had a great close. the next morning it made a quick run up but seemed to have trouble around .145 and .15. it came down and then went up again but seemed to be struggling in the .145 area. i was nervous after my last two plays (especially GFCI) so i jumped out @ .143 so as not to be too greedy — 15% ain’t bad when you’re only aiming for 10%. interestingly i had my limit in for .142 but it filled @ .143, so thank you MMs for that! even though it didn’t look like it would, it had a nice bullish close, but never really went any further the next day. also interestingly enough, i used the fibonacci indicator to calculate that 38.2% was a little below .16, and that’s precisely where the stock does not seem to be able to make it past — so good job proclivity for pointing that indicator out on GFCI, as it seems to show a similar result for RHWC too!

Social Picks — Trading in the Web 2.0 Era

the weekends tend to be fairly quiet seeing as how the markets are closed, so i decided that from now on i would write a little something on the weekends that doesn’t depend on the markets being open.  today, i thought i would point your attention to a new site i came across a couple weeks ago called SocialPicks.  honestly, i think this is a great site for research, sharing your picks with friends, and monitoring your portfolio.  from a user’s perspective, navigating the site is simple and it’s easy to write-up stocks you like (in terms of adding charts, writing a little analysis and tagging it all).  their SP score ranking system is fairly entertaining and you can compare yourself to other users on the site.  you can even compare yourself to the stock gurus like Buffett, Cramer, Soros, etc. because it tracks their portfolios.  it’s interesting because it breaks down what sectors you are invested in/looking at, tracks a variety of different blogs, allows you to start and join different groups, and add friends.  it breaks down what other users believe to be the top-rated stocks, sectors, and stocks that are hot at the moment.  obviously, i would advise being careful listening to the advice because of the “herd mentality,” but that goes for all forums and sites that have to do with trading.  as we say, do your DD!  and, i think this is just another site to add to your toolkit.  if nothing else, i can almost gurantee that you will find it entertaining — it’s social networking and stock trading coming together so that we traders don’t feel so lonely day in and day out

starting tomorrow, they are having a contest celebrating their launch where you have a chance to win $1,000 (no entry fee).  so, you should check it out.  if you want to friend me, feel free to — scmfinance is my user name. i also started a group called “chartists,” so feel free to join that if you feel so inclined to do so.  happy trading week!

The Saga Continues- with added Trickery

Okay, i’m still in this play (still haven’t learned my lesson about frequency LOL).  Mostly downward movement today from my entry point.  But the trickery!!  Imagine a HUGE run Wednesday when i got in, then about a 50% pullback, forming a huge white candle with a long upper shadow.  Today we end up with a short black candle next to the upper third  of Wednesday’s candle body and what could be the start of a deadly 3-inside-down pattern.  Or, considering the huge length of Wednesday’s upper shadow, it could be a continuation pattern.  Confirmation will be needed.

The trickery here is that Wednesday was strong buying pressure, but then in spite of this the mm’s started out fresh this morning with a walkdown and a couple of hard dips to hunt stoplosses.  The stoploss hunting was effective, triggering what looked to me like a dozen automated stops and these would then be followed by 4 or 5 manual exits.  I base this estimate on times elapsed.  What i didn’t see was the exit of a lot of the elephants who climbed in on wednesday.  So maybe today’s blood sacrifice from all the little people they crushed will satisfy the mm’s.  At this point, a $1.20 close, the elephants who entered at $1.30-1.32 wednesday just aren’t likely to go away- in fact, the further price dips now the more recalcitrant they’ll get- they’ll just start averaging down and waiting for a future run.  Bull elephants in the mm’s china shop.  Orange’s Rule: never trap an elephant.  always give them a graceful exit.  And the mm’s have got at least 10 or 15 true elephants in there.  I mean people with $15-20,000 on the line and the pps is sitting on 90-day support.  anyhow, look at the chart and tell me what you think.  personally, i’ve decided to quant it tonight and see what i get. 

Breaking a Rule- and it may cost me- or not

I’m in another trade. in getting in i may have broken one of my cardinal rules: i never chase a stock. this one ran very strongly wednesday, then pulled back and i jumped in looking for a bounce. the bounce did not come wednesday and i’m looking for it thursday. not only was volume huge, but the size of buys right thru EOD was phenomenal. maybe i’m just whistling past the graveyard, but i noticed that in afterhours trading the b/a and spread stayed the same as during normal hours, instead of the usual lowering of bid and widening of spread. i also am holding overnight, which i don’t like doing. we’ll just have to see how it goes. stay tuned.