The Student Loan Ranger

Was out for most of the day today, so haven't traded as much as I wanted. Not really making any gains today, think the heat is a major factor there.

Some nice charts (UAUA and FRE) for later on, once the market is a little less noisy. BAY had a strong rally today, but just didn't get past my trendline and horiz resistance at 247.5 - potentially a gap down then bull rally tomorrow depending on the oil price which is currently recovering from lows.


Evening update:
S&P went into ultra-rally mode to close the afternoon with really nice gains in C and BAC which both cleared recent resistance levels to close at highs. I'm looking for some positivity in RBS tomorrow on the back of that. Also oil ticked up a bit but didn't seem to affect the indices, so I'll be looking at BAY at this 'top of the channel' level for a potential short depending on the crude price in the morning.

TLW is looking nice and I'm looking for a nice range trading opportunity.

11:37 am

BP is assuming the role of captain unpredictable at the moment. I don't like the way this moves, and I think I will remove it from the list. The spread from CMC is killing me with this one - as it seems to do with all the UK stocks. If you're short term then you need a tight spread, and CMCs are very tight - until you open an order ticket to open a position, then it shoots off either side then returns to normal if you don't take a position.

Elsewhere RBS continues to make new daily highs, but does not allow an opening for my new strategy. Tesco is a nice chart to look at, but it's slow with big ranging candlesticks so not easy to get right. Tesco has been shouting at me to enter long this morning, and I haven't - not sure why, but it's now up 6p from the double bottom earlier in the day. It is pushing up against the 100EMA at the moment, so a potential short in the works here.

I had a look at the Volkswagen chart and that looks nice and clean so I might include that later this week. BAY is still the nicest chart to trade in Europe I think - very predictable through all the time frames. At the moment on the 15min chart it's shaping up for an entry long in the next hour or so. Siemens looking nice today, Nokia and Total have a lot of bad/no data today which is annoying.

770 is the key price for Tullow - 3 times in the past 3 days its struck and moved up, it's forming a descending wedge on the 5min chart, and I'm waiting for a breakout either side for entry - but I'm bullish.

As always I'm waiting for 2:30 for the US markets to open, so I can actually make some trades.

Evening update:
I missed out on the easiest £320 in my life today by closing a short on Fannie Mae way way way too quickly. I closed within 50 seconds because of an instant reverse which led to a loss above my 'new strategy' threshold. £40 loss would have been £320 profit if I had the plums to stick with it. That's happened way too often the past 3 days and that is something I really need to work on if I want to be successful. By the way I also closed at the highest possible exit after my original entry.

Anyway I just wanted to focus on something that seems to be the easiest thing to profit on: morning gaps. Stocks always gravitate back to the gap, or the high from the previous day. I see it all the time, particularly in the US financials at the moment. A gap up and a short rally is brought to an end sharply, and then the sell-off continues through the day, where at some point the gap is closed. Like I mentioned earlier to

A chart or two (including Fannie Mae)



I mentioned earlier in the day that I liked how Tesco was shaping up. It's a very clean cut stock in terms of it's movements, and today was a nice textbook example of support and resistance. Given the state of oil and the financials, a stock like Tesco is poised nicely, because everybody needs to eat. Also, Tesco do buy one get one free and Asda don't so I'm sold on that.

The Volkswagen chart is also very crisp, and is another welcomed addition to my Euro hitlist. It's goodbye to Vodafone and potentially RBS. There is a lot of money to be made with RBS, but it's the kind of stock that gives confirmation to go one way - and then unlike every other stock in the world - it reverses straight away. There is no safe position in a stock like that.

As for tomorrow I will not be trading until 2:30pm. I'm beginning to realise that although the Euro stocks are quite nice to trade - they don't do anything worthwhile until the US market news is out and after the US markets have opened. The FTSE is a total joke in terms of independence.

I'm continuing my new strategy into next week, it was a good week last week except for Friday - where I gave some back on tilt and not really following my own rules. I have included BP and Tullow Oil into the European watchlist this week.

I feel I needed some big cap exposure in oil for the Euro stocks, which BP provides nicely. Tullow Oil is an inclusion based on the technical indicators I'm reading into the chart, basically a gap closer above the 200MA with some nice hammers ending the week off:

Euro hitlist this week now is:

• NOK, SIE, BAY, RBS, TLW, BP., FRE.

US Hitlist:

• C, BAC, X, MON, DELL, UAUA, RIG, GE, GM.

As per usual there are a few I'm just watching - including Tesco as a possible Euro day trader. I will also start watching Baidu and Google a little more closely. I'm starting to get used to Apples movements too so this could be traded this week.

I have changed timescales on Monsanto to 15min, and US Steel to 10min. RBS is now 5min.

Keep an eye out for intra-day updates, there could be a lot this week. I am going to Crete for a week on Thursday, so Wednesdays posts will be the last until August 4th.

Man, I am so annoyed. I just spent ages writing a huge blog and then Blogger logged me out after I published it and didn't upload it.

Assume a nice week for trading, a bad Friday and lots of action that I don't have time to write about twice.

Slight rotation on the US hitlist.

Stupid Blogger!

RBS is totally untradable at times. Today I entered at support of the EMA, 5 seconds later it went to auction, and 10 seconds later it dropped off all support completely. Chart to follow.

First trade of the day was a bad one, good job I've got another 7 hours to go.

Getting killed by RBS, cutting losses quickly but this stock literally reverses as soon as you enter. The UK market is not a profitable market until the US market is open. At least I'll get long lies in. The thing that's really killing me this morning is CMCs spread, when you're in a trade it just shoots off by .3 or .4 in the direction you need to close in, which is pathetic.

CMC spread in black, actual market depth red and green.

This makes me wonder why CMC even offer "real-time market depth" as a selling point - because it isn't even close to the real L2 in terms of price, volume or flow.

All is quiet on the Western front this morning, so I'll cover a few charts and news from Yesterday - which was another great day for trading. There is a lot of buoyancy in the markets at the moment, predominantly sparked by the crashing oil prices. The financials are picking up nicely, so the rest of the market is doing the same.

There was a tremendous rally in the states yesterday as the oil reserves were announced and were higher than anticipated - this briefly tilted the scales in favour of the supply side, thus sending the price lower.

Prior to the news I filled out some order tickets for BAY and TSO (Airline/Refiner), and got ready to hit either sell or buy. The news was good so I was long in BAY and TSO. TSO was a shorter term play, as it tends to react nicely and then tail off quite soon after. BAY traded nicely, I sold out due to my current rules - and would have tripled holding into this morning.

Here are a few charts from yesterday, X and C are very nice on a technical level.


I'm waiting for the post-lunch movements and the US market opening before getting into anything today. The S&P is really taking off pre-market so I expect some good trading in C and BAC today. I will also look to open positions in X and MON depending on their sectors.

I've started to notice something exploitable about SIE and NOK - they tend to move very slowly, and then make very explosive moves at the key decision points. There have been 2 times this week where all the factors have come down to a single point, and they have both rapidly gained over €1.

I was busy writing this blog when they made their moves today, so hopefully I will catch their moves next time.

It was a very boring day today until about 15:30. I crashed out at lunch time, and by the time I was back at the desk I had missed some good shorts on VOD and RBS.

I was watching the S&P charts while watching DayTraderRockStar, and noticed the buying volume coming into the game. I jumped in BAC for a quick profit and exited selling at highs, thinking it would retrace - and it did, but I did not reverse because the market is moving really fast at the moment.

The bigger news however was oil, down $8, so I immediately opened a long in BAY, and it went absolutely parabolic! Check out the chart:


Update, I missed the re-entry on BAY it's at 215.75 but oil is retracing at the market is closed. Depending on how oil trades for the rest of the day, BAY could be a high risk leading into tomorrow so I'm glad I'm out.

It's not only airlines that are affected by the shifts in oil price, here are another 2 charts from the same time frame as my BAY trade. Remember I mentioned oil producers and oil refiners are tradeable on big oil news:



If the OIL price is down:

• Go LONG: Airlines, Car makers and Refiners.
• Go SHORT: Oil exploration, Gold and Oil services.

Also note that drops in oil leads to rallies across the markets, so look for good relative strength stocks with volatility to trade in the very short term.

Terrific start to my new methods: Broker platform broken.

Can you believe it?

I can.

Update 11:20
Good day so far in terms of new strategy. The only issue is an early exit on Nokia. Quite a lot of news surrounding airline support services today, and on the US open I expect some good market sentiment towards Boeing and United Technologies. These aren't on my watchlist, but these types of companies could boost the index.

I have 2 really nice charts to post later, absolute technical perfection on the Nokia and Siemens charts from this morning between 10-11am. I was in Nokia and offloaded too quickly. Nokia and Siemens move similarly, however Nokia precedes Siemens in the moves so that is something worth exploiting in the future.

Had a nice trade in BAY earlier too, and had a good exit, but there are no indicators to reverse at the moment in terms of risk:reward.

I am currently tracking VOD and waiting for an entry there based on the moving averages golden cross. The overhead resistance at 149.25 is quite stern today so I will no enter until that is broken. GSK is really struggling with the MA at the moment, however there is some concrete support just below the current price, and therefore the range is not tradeable at the moment.

I just took a long in VOD

Dropped the VOD for tiny profit, it reversed.

Evening update:
Didn't spent too much time trading this afternoon, it was roasting outside.

Anyway here's the Siemens chart from earlier, the TA on my Nokia chart has mysteriously dissapeared from my platform (they're just so reliable!)


You can see the nice MA rejection, then finding support at the SR line, and then making moves of the fastlines, past the 200EMA and right up to the longer term trend line. It started to flag for the rest of the day, and jumped down a bit at closing. I'm keen for a long if the flag range is broken off the MA, otherwise it's a short to 69.4.

Had a trade in Citigroup earlier, yet again cashed in far far too quickly and it would have been more than my daily profit target had I held.

Not quite a Crystal Balling post, but a general rundown of my setup for the coming week for those interested.

My pool of stocks this week, firstly those from Europe (8am-4:30pm):

• British Airways
• Siemens
  
• Royal Bank of Scotland
  
• GlaxoSmithKline
  
• TOTAL
• Nokia
• Vodafone

And American (2:30pm-9pm):

• United States Steel
• Bank of America
• Citigroup
• Monstanto
• Google
• Transocean
• Microsoft
• General Electric
• Cisco
  

Dependent on market sentiment and oil prices this also includes:

• Oil refiners (Valero, Tosero)
  
• Airlines (Delta, UA)
• Solars
  
• Oil services/exploration (Halliburton, Exxon)
  
• Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae on potential recovery plays with a very small position
  

The first 2 lists are my core for this week, and I have spent a lot of hours today and yesterday on my technical analysis for this week.

My main timeframe this week will be the 15 minute chart, while referencing the daily for specific patterns, and the 30 minute for confirmation of entry and exit.

The main patterns and entry/exits I am looking for this week are:

• Flags
• Re-tested double bottoms/tops
• Wedge breakouts
• Moves off line of ambiguity
• Strong trend reversals
• Expansion breakouts
• Cup and handle
  

1. My exit criteria is from support or resistance area, to resistance or support area. This depends greatly on whether the stock is in a wedge/channel or has broken a pattern which has a pre-defined exit point anyway.
2. Where there are any gray areas after entry, my stop will be the previous bars low. In all other cases I will trail the stop judging by support and resistance areas.
3. I will also be using the 25, 50 and 100MAs, as well as the 250 on BAY, BAC, C and X.
4. My position size will be dependant on margin, however I will probably use a third of what I would normall enter with.

Of all weeks trading so far, I think I have spent the most prep-time on this one. Fail to prepare, prepare to fail and all of that.

I will upload my trades on Wed and Sat so keep an eye out.

My top 3 rules for this week

1. Follow the rules you idiot!
   
2. Do not fear the retracement
3. Take the money and run
   

Going through the motions here, haven't really looked at anything on the list since Wednesday. New strategies etc mean a watchlist like this isn't really effective, but let's wrap it up quickly anyway.

• BRWM - Failed 200MA, about to trigger a short.
• ADN gave out short signal under 115m but this could be a fakeout
  
• AGK has done as expected and dropped to 660, let's see if it off this moves next week
• Perfect setup on GSK, 100% accuracy trade as it did what it said on the tin
• ADM just triggered a short entry on the closing bell on Friday
• No signal on AMEC as it looks to retest support at 855 again and holding up
• Descending wedge on BAY tightens, possible new all time lows as oil price soars here
• Would have caught a ST long on EXPN, but this dropped hard on Friday, potential breakdown
• FGP had strong gains until it hit my trend line and crashed hard
• IEC untradable at the moment
• MPI and SDR both on the verge of a similar breakdown
• No signals on IMI this week

The news about Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE) in the US hit all the markets hard on Friday, with a lot of indices really crashing hard on the news, despite the shares gaining 50% on their daily lows. FNM and FRE were once $70 stocks in the last 7 months, both are now around $7.

RBS has hit another new low as it crashed hard below 200. The FTSE had a bit of a shocker, even as the US markets came back during Friday. Oil price is at another record high - this is why everything is so dangerous to hold overnight at the moment.

The price of oil only moves to new highs when the US and European markets are closed - therefore if you hold financials or anything oil related (airlines, car manufacturers etc) then you will get smashed at the open. There are no stocks that are safe to hold overnight, and certainly not over a weekend.

In my opinion, all this stuff about Iran is just hype, and they will not attack. Why would they? And why is ok for the US to have nuclear power and weapons but nobody else, the US would use them if they had to too.

Anyway, geo-political issues are driving the market more than ever, so you have a lot of action to monitor while you're trading. This is why I have setup my stall completely different over the next few weeks, until all the business is settled.

If you check these posts: here and here then you can read up on my new tactics and stocklist. Unfortunately this means no Crystal Balling posts, which is good for me as I need as much time as possible for analysis. I will try to post some trade analysis on the intra-day posts to let you know how I'm attacking the markets.

I'm looking forward to trading clearer markets once a bottom has been established, and the volatility has been reduced - but the scalp option is the only option at the moment.