Pivot Point Trading

Nurofen Plus solves that problem!

No, I'm not dead, just spent the last several days without sleep being bombarded by doctors probing every orifice so no chance to get on the market, hence no postings to the blog.

But I digress. I've decided to post up a quick and dirty pivot point of the top stocks on the list for tomorrow, 20th Feb 2008 (for those of you playing along at home). It's a rough list of the top 50ish stocks, which I cull before open. I'm looking for the top ADPV stocks which are opening between H3 and H4 or L3 and L4. Then I'll keep an eye on anything penetrating their "4" levels so this should keep it down to 5 or so stocks. I'm also interested in any levels that are even numbers (for obvious reasons).

I figured this might alleviate any doubt about the "hindsight" aspect of my trading results posts.

So without further ado, here they are:

We'll see how they perform after close tomorrow......

(doesn't BHP look delicious sitting at $39.99 on the H4?.....)

Don't we wish all days were like today? Maybe the break did me good, maybe the system is actually working? Or maybe being poked by all them doctors finally got my brain working?

Well whatever it was, sure was a great day. I worked strictly off the watchlist I posted this morning before the open (except for one straggler that popped up on a scan - IRE). As I said this morning, I was shooting for around 5 stocks on the culled list. There ended up being a total of 9 stocks on the list as I decided to also add anything opening outside the H4/L4 levels as these things can really move. A couple took off and never came back so didn't get the opportunity to trade them Oh well, guess that's what the trading rules are for.

Speaking of which, I did break my "no trading in the first 1/2 hour" rule and sure enough those are the ones that bit me. Have I learnt that lesson yet???

Anyways, no charts today as I posted up all of the levels for you this morning. So what I've got below are the actual results. Let's hope this continues.

Cheers
AV

=====================

AGK
Long: $12.43
(tried to fade *sigh*)
Stop: $12.32
Profit: -$ 58

AGK
Short: $12.30
Cover: $11.84
Profit: $174

AMP
Long: $7.96
Stop: $7.90
Profit: -$ 46


AMP
Short: $7.84
Cover: $7.64
Profit: $120


BXB
Short: $9.69
Cover: $9.29
Profit: $190


MAP
Short: $3.89
Cover: $3.84
Profit: $ 60


NCM
Long: $35.09
Sell: $35.93
Profit: $116


QBE
Long: $26.53
Sell: $27.35
Profit: $154


STO
Long: $14.18
Sell: $14.39
Profit: $ 63


TAH
Long: $14.47
Sell: $14.60
Profit: $ 35


TAH
Short: $14.23
Cover: $13.84
Profit: $126

WOW
Long: $27.42
Sell: $28.03
Profit: $112


IRE
(not on the list, popped up on a scan)
Short: $6.15
Cover: $6.02
Profit: $ 94

==========================
TOTAL PROFIT: $1140
==========================

Total Trades: 13
Winners: 11 (85%)
Losers: 2 (15%)
Avg Win: $113
Avg Loss: -$52

Hey A,

Firstly well done on yesterday!

Secondly, can i ask what sort of margin and position sizes you are taking? If you wish to disclose.

thanks mate

Howdy Prawn

Thanks mate! Sure was a cracker of a day. Thought I'd reply whilst I'm in the lunch break. Have to force myself to shutdown my platform otherwise I start taking naughty trades

Margin depends on the stock but normally between 5%-35%, most being around 5%-10%. Position size varies with the stock, margin and risk but most come out around the $5k mark now that I've reduced the size (was up around $10K). So my actual outlay on any trade is only around $250-$500.

Today's not going quite as well, far too many signals going off!!!!

Cheers
AV

thanks for that.

perhaps for ease of reading you could include a % profit, as well as a monetary value.

its your blog so do what you want, but it would be nice to see since im watching closely

Not a bad idea at all. Unfortunately it's a major pain in the a$$ My brokers platform is bloody terrible on it's reporting functions. Doesn't even group the trades together, just chucks them all together. And once the trade is done, no mention of the margin used.

But I understand what ya mean and it's a good idea. I'm probably not going to make a habit of reporting every trade I do, maybe just the super good and super bad with an overview. Yesterday was an exception hehehehe.

Hmmm, maybe I can give ya the overall profit % in the summary somehow....

And in Peru you can get iboprofin 600mg, which solves ANY problem.

Damn great to be drinking Aussie reds again though!!!

I thought you were limiting the list to 5??

Yet another fun day - I'm beginning to like this! Unfortunately, the profit was shocking but for some reason I really enjoyed myself today.

I knew it was going to be a tough day when I culled my top 50 list down and ended up with........36 FREAKING STOCKS!!!. I really couldn't believe how many were in my target area today. You may remember last time this happened I nearly had a major meltdown LOL. Well I calmed myself down, realised I couldn't trade everything but loaded it all into a watchlist and spent the day gradually flicking down the list, checking the chart, loading an alert, then on to the next one.

Needless to say, alerts don't calmly go off once every 5 minutes or so, no, that'd be far too nice & easy. Instead, they go off 10 at a time!! Just as I'd enter a trade, another alert goes off, then other, then other. This did slow me down a lot which I think helps explain the low trade frequency today, despite the target rich environment.

I kinda got used to it in the end and just decided that once I was in 2 trades at a time I just had to pass on any others that came along. Of course once I exited, no more alerts for bloody ages.

Now of course, Mr Murphy being one of my closest friends, the real screamer trades today were the ones I passed on: BHP, BXB, WOW, BSL to name a few (BSL would have been a $200 corker). But just got to grin and bare it I guess or it'll get on top of you real quick.

One that did really pi$$ me off today was BHP. Got stopped out twice in a row on a short position. It just wanted to keep hanging around the H3 which was unfortunately right on $39. The alert went off again 10 mins later and I passed on the trade and of course, the price dropped to $38.12. Ah well, only missed out on $100 *sigh*
[Just a quick update, BHP ended up closing the day right on that H3 $39 level. These pivots can be scary in their accuracy]

I also got bitch slapped on a couple of trades where I didn't wait for a definite break of support. Getting far too cocky I think and it's something I'll have to add to my "DO NOT DO THIS" list (that list is getting mighty big).

I've got a lot of work to do tonight to refine this list process and study every possible trade to improve on the winners. I figure there were around 40 trades possible today. Kind of makes me wish my broker had an API that I could hook up automated trading to.

So here's the wash up for today. I won't make a habit of reporting every trade like yesterday, just a quick summary. Prawn has suggested adding a profit % figure too and whilst this is a bit hard, I'll just use a base margin amount of 7.5% to make it easy (most stocks are 5-10% margin).

Considering the amount of signals today the total trades is pretty amazing at only 8. Avg win $ is also waaaaayyy down as I couldn't get a good run on these trades - the runners were all the ones I passed up! Brokerage took a big bite today with the low win $ also. But at least it's still positive (as am I). So here's the rundown, until next time...

Cheers
AV

Total Trades: 8
Winners: 5 (63%)
Losers: 3 (37%)
Avg Win: $33
Avg Loss: -$15
Gross Profit: $118.50
Gross Profit %: 4.2%
Brokerage: $85
(17 trades in all - my broker loves me! Think I might have to up my account size soon so I can go down to $2 brokerage per trip)

=============
Net Profit: $33.50 (hmmm, enough for a nice bottle of Chardy and a burger )
Net Profit %: 1.2%
=============

I'm heading to Peru!

Yeah I was, and that's what I was originally shooting for, just got a bit too greedy. Nothing compared to today when I got 36 on the list! Read the blog and see if I'll learn that lesson yet again....

Hope you didn't come in here looking for the actual answer because I'm still trying to pin point it myself. I've read all the guff on these things and if you google it you'll find 5000 people smarter than me who can explain it better than I. But the basic gist is, it's all about prices returning to means.

But I was still curious how these Camarilla levels were proving right more often than not. I've previously used historical intraday charts to find support/resistance as these are normally really good indicators of future s/r points. So how the hell did the Camarilla beat these?

Well on the really brief study I've done tonight...they don't! They're actually pretty darn close to the actual historical intraday s/r levels! How the hell it does this with just HLC data I'm still not sure (all that "returning to the mean" mathematical jargon I suspect) but check out these couple of charts below and do some comparisons yourself. These are tomorrows camarilla levels projected over todays charts, just the first 4 charts I've checked. Spooky...

Cheers
AV

OK, we're moving into the 22nd century here and starting a video blog! (lets see how long it lasts hey?)

Since the last entry, I continued trading the Camarilla levels and I still think they are a VERY good trading tool. However, with the current feed/platform I have they just became far too time consuming. I had to process the levels every night, select my stock targets, manually draw the levels on the charts (which frequently screwed up and take about 15 mins per stock) and it just got too damn hard. So until I find a reliable charting / trading platform I've gone back to basics. And so far, seems to be working pretty well.

So without further ado, here's the first day trading video. Enjoy!

Cheers
AV