Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Buying a Stock before earning is a gamble, even with Apple!!!

aapl

This afternoon after the market closed, Apple reported earnings. I have been taught that in most cases that it is never a good idea to buy a stock 1 or 2 weeks before earnings. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose but it’s never worth the gamble. You can always get in after and ride the safe wave up or down, but stay clear of the drama. I will say, that it feels really good when you buy a stock right before and it just zooms to the sky, but how do you know up or down? You don’t!!!

Best to use methods like trend lines and CBL lines to get in and out and that will normally protect you. Tomorrow morning when Apple opens, if the overnight numbers hold, Apple is going to be greeted to a 50 or more point drop of at least 10%. I do not even know what the news or numbers were that were reported, but it doesn’t really matter. That is going to hurt a lot of feelings.

 

After Hours Chart Below

aapl-2

Monday, January 14, 2013

Apple update

aaplLast week I wrote about Apple Stock and why you should wait for a reason to buy a stock. Have a plan of attack and know that you have done your best to make a good entry and plan for an exit if it goes against you. The last CBL line that we had drawn almost had follow through but it broke down and failed before we should have committed any money. So here we are again, bad news from Apple that they are scaling back production of the Iphone-5 because of demand. If I understand what I heard correctly, cutting production by 50%. News really doesn’t matter as far we are concerned, price action is what we want. As price falls and the down trend line continue to fall, we move our CBL buy line down with it. We wait for price to close above the CBL and then we buy the next day. The next item to be concerned with here is that solid red support line at $501-$502 area. You could bottom fish here and hope that it holds, but I do not bottom fish using support. I need to see some price action with rules. I need that CBL to be broken and held.  I would like to see price also close to the upside on the upside of the downtrend line. Finally, I would like to see price close above the 50 day moving average, but not required for me. So in order in importance, CBL, Downtrend line, 50 day ma.

I would bottom fish with just a broken CBL.

Sunday, January 6, 2013

2012 ending trade numbers

image

Trading stocks long and short have been my greatest challenge. I’m still trying to find my spot and what I’m good at when it comes to individual stocks. When it comes to trading an index or ETF, I think I got a pretty good handle on that as you can  monitor on my TSP blog. The reason is simple and that is because indexes and ETF’s are made up of multiple stocks, so they rise and fall more slowly. An individual can move so fast that trend traders, like myself can be abused in choppy markets. So once again I will take 2012 as a lesson and see if in 2013 I can turn a corner and make a profit.

I never claimed to be good at stock trading and this is my goal to become a consistent profit maker even if it’s 1% or greater.

Current stocks: PDLI, GWR, KORS, EXK, VHC, SWHC. Currently 1 stock up, 5 down. Smile