Art Vandelay

 
I used to buy when a stock moves up and sell when it goes down. It took me a long time to realise that this might feel nice, but really does hurt profit potential. 
Toni Hansen showed me the importance of momentum. 
IPG was a strong mover in the morning but came off the highs. 
On the 15 [...]

Many traders would call today a trend day since it started at one end of the range and closed in the other. From the sound of it you would think that you can make a lot of money on these days, yet usually I do worse on those days. Probably because I keep feeling I [...]

The market opened with a big down gap. Gaps usually fill… sometime. All morning long I had this feeling that it really was too late to short but too early to go long. However, over noon the pace of the market shifted on the 5 and 15 min charts and CME (on the list of [...]

I expected an upday for today, since the daily charts in the indices were pretty extendend to the downside and yesterday was a consolidation day with some positive pace development in the 60 min ranges. 
The indices gapped up slightly and broke the morning high. At last, I could go look for a few nice longs. 
The [...]

I could not find a lot in the gainers/losers list, but there was a gapper that made it to my list because of the great daily. 
 
Though I did expect the market to bounce strongly and I was not really looking for short this one was too good to pass up, but I did not expect [...]

It was hard to find decent setups again, but this one was nice. 
A great pattern, the avalanche, took the price for a nice ride. 2R seems almost ridiculous to cover most of the short… but usually it works very well!
 

I don’t like downtrending markets, but I might was well get used to it since it looks it is going to stay like that for a while to come.
Did one trade yesterday, and could not find a lot today. Must be because I kept looking for longs, and missed most of the nice short [...]

Tired from trading? No, not at all, just very busy, too busy to post.
I intend to start posting again as soon as possible.

The 30 min dummy setup caught my eye. I zoomed in on the 1 min chart and found a 2 min base with a double bottom with a slightly lower second low.
This slightly lower low can often trigger the up move. At the same time the market (QQQQ’s in this case) bounced from a sort [...]

BRCM gapped up big time, moved nicely off the opening range. I missed that move but into lunch it had retraced almost the complete move. What caught my eye were several things.

It had found support on the morning range bar.
there was a nice 2 wave pullback

Especially the pace development in the pull back was [...]

Solar Power to the rescue… I missed most of the shorting ‘fun’ today, had a few scratch trades. In the afternoon the market started a reversal and I spotted FSLR. It had a 1 min 2 wave pullback and a nicebase after that. As the market was consolidating at the same time it was the [...]

Today I did not feel very in sync with the market. When I shorted the market went up, or the market went down but my short did go up. It was a struggle, but there were one or two nice trades that saved the day.
Cenx was one of them. It gapped up, just like many [...]

Somehow my natural inclination is to go long stocks. Once a bear market start I am usually in trouble first, until I readjust.
Today I had a few good trades, IBN was one of them, but I kept anticipating the market reversal.
I traded CIEN long twice, only to be stopped out. It was all very obvious, [...]

That is what I should do in a market like this. It is a bear market, but I am still in bull market mode… looking for long trades. I should more often take a shot at a short.
At least I made some money today.

Click the chart for an overview
This was a very nice trade. But there could have been more in it. A lot more!
CNQ gapped up and formed a nice base. Just before 11.00 pace changed. The first wave down was the steepest. The second wave was a lot slower and the third wave stayed even more [...]

click the chart
The currency (FOREX) market is hot. The $ is stone cold. The daily EURUSD chart looked like it could breakdown, but instead it broke to the upside with a lot of conviction. Crazy conviction! But in crazy markets there is often money to be made and the EURUSD was no exception today!
 

Click on the chart for an overview
DLTR gapped up out of a daily consolidation. After a two wave correction during the day I spotted it when it showed the beginning of a 1 min bull flag. I was impatient in entering and cheated on target. There was only 30 minutes of the trading day left [...]

big momentum move
consolidation
red lines are initial and trailing stops
1st pink line is long entry ( 8.67)
2nd pink line is partial exit (8.93)
3rd pink line is closing trade (9.25)
risk was 0.13, reward was (0.26 + 0.58)/2= 42 cts or more than 3R