So fade your instincts and short when you're wanting to go long and buy when you want to short.
The Official Trading Thread
- Thread starter mGrunin
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So fade your instincts and short when you're wanting to go long and buy when you want to short.
Wanted to buy some DIA weeklies but Ameritrade won't let me buy options. Says I need to apply, which I did. Meanwhile, two hours ago bought as much DDM (ultra dow 30 ETF) as possible. And then I tried to add more funds to the account, but it says no bank in the records even though I added a bank account yesterday for the initial deposit... Ameritrade is a pos. i wonder what the professionals use to trade options...
S&P is still respecting the trendline. Activity this week is more bullish than the prior since intraday we are actually trading above the trendline. By the close of the markets, S&P begins to fade finish under the trendline. This happened yesterday and today.
ameritrade isn't a POS. the fact that you're struggling with the signup process may indicate options aren't for you.
Trades from Monday:
Scrapped two successful trades early on. My focus was selling my call positions before getting resistance up above. Worked like a charm at the $440 level and $444.
Unfortunately on my last position, I was caught opening more calls at the high of the day...
Moments later a sell off ensued which did catch me by surprise. This was primarily because Apple was set to have a hearing in front of the senate today regarding their offshare cash. The sell off was fierce and it continued into the after markets bringing Apple as low as $438.
I did not sell.
First of all:
1) Right at the open we had a serious bounce off the $430 level. Bullish.
2) Cut through $440 easily, and continued to hold it as a support throughout the day. Bullish.
3) Overcame the $441 resistance that we had difficulty overcoming the last few day of the prior week. Bullish.
I viewed the last 15 minutes of trading as noise - nonsense. The weak hands being shaken.
When the hearing began early in the morning, the selling continued but we had a healthy bounce of the 50 DMA. Actually two bounces. BULLISH.
Once Tim Cook began talking, the stock began to rally and I added some more contracts at $439.50. Less than two hours later the stock came out of the red and came right back to the $445 level. All was great, but as soon as they switched the panel and Tim Cook was pushed away..the sell off began. This caught me by surprise again because the hearing finished but things kept selling. Difficult to understand why because nothing came out of the hearing, Apple was not blamed for illegally holding money overseas and not paying taxes..only thing that came out of it was that the senate realized they need to have a tax reform.
At some points we dropped slightly below $440 before bouncing right back up but we did finish just under $440. Not the best news.
I am also still holding onto the calls from Monday.
In the aftermarket Apple was trading above $440.
Scrapped two successful trades early on. My focus was selling my call positions before getting resistance up above. Worked like a charm at the $440 level and $444.
Unfortunately on my last position, I was caught opening more calls at the high of the day...
Moments later a sell off ensued which did catch me by surprise. This was primarily because Apple was set to have a hearing in front of the senate today regarding their offshare cash. The sell off was fierce and it continued into the after markets bringing Apple as low as $438.
I did not sell.
First of all:
1) Right at the open we had a serious bounce off the $430 level. Bullish.
2) Cut through $440 easily, and continued to hold it as a support throughout the day. Bullish.
3) Overcame the $441 resistance that we had difficulty overcoming the last few day of the prior week. Bullish.
I viewed the last 15 minutes of trading as noise - nonsense. The weak hands being shaken.
When the hearing began early in the morning, the selling continued but we had a healthy bounce of the 50 DMA. Actually two bounces. BULLISH.
Once Tim Cook began talking, the stock began to rally and I added some more contracts at $439.50. Less than two hours later the stock came out of the red and came right back to the $445 level. All was great, but as soon as they switched the panel and Tim Cook was pushed away..the sell off began. This caught me by surprise again because the hearing finished but things kept selling. Difficult to understand why because nothing came out of the hearing, Apple was not blamed for illegally holding money overseas and not paying taxes..only thing that came out of it was that the senate realized they need to have a tax reform.
At some points we dropped slightly below $440 before bouncing right back up but we did finish just under $440. Not the best news.
I am also still holding onto the calls from Monday.
In the aftermarket Apple was trading above $440.
Lastly, I had a quick trade on Google with a few calls. One thing for you to look at is the selling at $920. Remember the chart from the weekend where I pointed out that $920 is a tough resistance. Well this is a great sample of how rough that level is. I did a poor job in capitalizing on a short trade from that level.
Will post an indepth description of what happened with the markets today a little later on. Biggest points to take from my own activity, I sold AAPL at a loss ( I even added intraday), but I made gains on SPX Calls and even better gains on SPX Puts.
Need to get some dinner, had no breakfast, lunch or anything today. I'll come back and break this down. Today might be the top of the markets!!
Overall gain today: $4,458.00. This is with taking a $2k loss on the newly opened Apple positions today.
Need to get some dinner, had no breakfast, lunch or anything today. I'll come back and break this down. Today might be the top of the markets!!
Overall gain today: $4,458.00. This is with taking a $2k loss on the newly opened Apple positions today.
Will post an indepth description of what happened with the markets today a little later on. Biggest points to take from my own activity, I sold AAPL at a loss ( I even added intraday), but I made gains on SPX Calls and even better gains on SPX Puts.
Need to get some dinner, had no breakfast, lunch or anything today. I'll come back and break this down. Today might be the top of the markets!!
Overall gain today: $4,458.00. This is with taking a $2k loss on the newly opened Apple positions today.
Do you have a specific method to choosing your entry points? Take the Google 920 resistance and 899 support levels that you posted the other day, is there a buffer zone that you have to enter into these positions (i.e. 922 for a call, 896 for a put, etc)?
You might want to mark May 22nd as possibly to top on the markets for now. What happened today is exactly what I warned about a couple days ago. When Bernanke (Chairman of Fed Reserve) began speaking today, the markets did rally and I caught a piece of that. Once the conversations turned into the stimulus being toned down, the markets turned for the worst.
What really sunk the markets is the FOMC Minutes that was released at 2 PM EST that said that QE might be toned down as early as June! Remember, the only reason why the markets have rallied so much this year is only because of the constant stimulus by the federal reserve. Remove that, and we will sell off extremely fast.
I ended up snatching puts at the break of today's low and the trade proved to be profitable. I sold half of it at the support and holding the rest overnight. In the chart, you are also looking at the aftermarket hours. /ES (futures of S&P) has continued to drop very heavy so my remaining five contracts are looking very solid for tomorrow's open.
What really sunk the markets is the FOMC Minutes that was released at 2 PM EST that said that QE might be toned down as early as June! Remember, the only reason why the markets have rallied so much this year is only because of the constant stimulus by the federal reserve. Remove that, and we will sell off extremely fast.
I ended up snatching puts at the break of today's low and the trade proved to be profitable. I sold half of it at the support and holding the rest overnight. In the chart, you are also looking at the aftermarket hours. /ES (futures of S&P) has continued to drop very heavy so my remaining five contracts are looking very solid for tomorrow's open.
Allow me to bring an analogy to this. Imagine holding a handball in your hands and letting it drop to the ground. It will bounce of the ground over and over again, but with every bounce it will be weaker. This is similar how a stock will act at a resistance or support. Those levels can keep holding over and over again but at some point either the buyers (on support) or the sellers (on resistance) will not be able to hold the stock at that level because demand drops. Typically a clear indicator for me is volume. Once volume becomes weak on the support or resistance, this tells me that if it comes under/over once more, it will either leg down or leg up.
Having a bit of a buffer is always a good idea obviously and paying attention to the activity is crucial. The more time the stock might spend time right under the support or right over the resistance also tells me that we are looking for a breakout.
Lets take a look at Google:
There is obviously a drop in volume the last time it attempted to hold $900. That was the indicator for a short.
Just look at that, the whole premarket move was faded today. During the night the futures were down over 1%..by the end of the markets they were only down 0.30%. At its high it was actually in the green!
Fortunately I closed my put positions near the open, locked in $2,925 in gains today.
Fortunately I closed my put positions near the open, locked in $2,925 in gains today.