Weekly update with my personal stocks.

This week I was stopped out of 3 positions that put me back in the hole for the year. LULU was unfortunate, because after I got stopped out, the next 2 days it went back up to where I would have been in the money. Ford I had on a automatic buy limit order and I will not do that again. TIBX, I just screwed up the initial stop order when I bought it and gave away $22.69.

My remaining positions are mostly in good shape except for Gild. I was going to wait until the 3rd day after the original bad news and then set my stop loss at the lowest point. That has been done and even though I do not like my risk, I have accepted the risk. Just to note I have at least 2 stop fail because news drove price before the market opened and took price below my stop loss order. One I let fire, and the other I paused for 3 days.

CAT is by far my best run and maybe if I’m lucky, it will be my longest and best in the end. KOG is getting off to a nice start and I can only hope that it will stretch it’s legs before it decides to rest or reverse. Lastly, UA was looking as if I was going to lose that position also, but Friday UA made a big upside move and almost in the stop loss money. I could close all positions now and end with a small profit. Not interested.

Rough time in a good market.

Individual stock trading is hard and it is always testing my patience. Since February 10th, I have gotten stopped out of 4 stocks, bought and sold one in 10 seconds because I screwed up an order, and then finally saw a $100 plus profit reverse overnight to a $50 loss. A 20% price drop over night because of news in one stock. Argh!! GILD !!!

Made a few moves this week. 2/4/12

I bought GE January 5th late in the uptrend because I didn’t have any monies when the signal was fired. On January 10th, it stopped climbing and entered into a consolidation or Bullflag pattern. I decided Friday to take my little tiny profit, .95% or $9, sell into strength of the market, and invest in a stock that was breaking out. I also will keep GE in my watch list to see if it breaks out to the upside. If it does, I will re-purchase and ride the climb.

 

This is the replacement for GE. You will see that it was in the same Bull Flag that GE was in but Friday broke out. how can you not take this? I’m in at $16.71 with a $16.05 stop loss. This is a very slow moving stock that I have already made money on, so let’s hope that this is the next leg up.

 

Home Depot is another stock that was stuck in a Bull Flag and was not doing anything for me lately. I had a very nice gain in HD, so since I had another stock breaking out, I took my profit and invested somewhere else. I held HD for 48 days and made a 10% profit. I will also keep HD close and on a watch for a breakout to the upside.

 

LULU is my replacement for Home Depot. This stock actually broke out a few days back but I just didn’t feel at the time it was the right time to buy. So I’m about 8 days behind it but I still feel comfortable because my stop loss is tight just in case. LULU doesn’t report earnings until 3/15/12 so maybe I will get a little move before that point and I will not get crushed in case they miss. Either way I will ride the trend.

Still making money. Let’s see what happens we things turn nasty. This is where I know personally I need the most work. Shorting stocks is not fun and I do not have as much confidence playing that side, Yet!

3 New stocks this week, and 1 out.

First up is Bank of America. After it reported earnings I decided I wanted this stock but finding an entry was hard. So I just decided on the 24th to make my entry and keep the trailing stop tight in case I was wrong and was going to be burned. One thing to take notice on this chart is the little blue dots under price. This is something I ‘m looking at that will give me a good trailing stop starting point in case I do not have a pivot low to build off of. Below is my risk numbers for BAC. .63% on total investment, that’s tight.

Next is Ford. The earnings report on Ford hit Friday and it did not live up to expectation but overall it wasn’t that bad. But, sellers stepped in and drove price down well below my stop loss. I was forced to take a 3% profit and put Ford back in my watch list. I will be watching this stock closely next week because I want it back if it can reverse and create a new higher pivot low. I like Ford and I still think it is in the beginning of a long term uptrend.

Next up is GLID. I hate trying to find a entry point on stocks when they run like this. I missed the true entry which was December 27th – 29th and since that point nothing but uphill everyday. So what normally happens when I finally do pull the trigger on trends like this, is that I call the top and it reverses. I do not think I have gotten one of these right yet. With that knowledge, I should have just stepped aside, but instead I pulled the trigger Friday and put my stop loss order on what looked to me like the last resistance when it was broken. I have a .41% risk on entire portfolio and 3.36% risk on this one transaction. I feel pretty safe because of the small consolidation and breakout that I highlighted on the chart. Another thing that I know I shouldn’t do is buy right before earnings and GILD reports next Thursday 2/2/12. So if this transaction doesn’t pan out, who you gonna blame? Uh, me!!

Last is SYK. On a Weekly chart SYK is breakout right now and is going to give a buy signal Monday. On the daily chart I’m way behind the curve and should have bought this stock about the same time I should have GILD above. That’s ok, at least this time I’m buying after earnings and all I have to fear here is that price might give back some of the surge in price that happened the day of earning were reported. I waited one day after thinking there would be some profit taking, and there was, then on day two I was just looking for a little strength after the 10am point of the day. I pulled the trigger and set my stop loss order with a .3% overall risk and with a single transaction risk of 2.43%

Below you will find my current status for the year and like I always say, if they will not show you their true progress, walk away because you know they blowing smoke up your………

Where I stand for the year as of 1/20/2012

Bounced out of Under Armor

Unfortunately, I got bounced out of Under Armor because of a news article by Jefferies making a comment about fear that UA was not going to make or meet earnings expectation next week. So prior to the market opening, UA fell below my stop loss and executed just a bit lower than my risk point. You can read my original write below this post with the original chart and compare it to the bounced out chart. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. This time technicals lost to NEWS. I will keep UA on my radar but will not touch it again no matter what until after earnings.

The write below was from January 12th

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Last stock I want to talk about is Under Armor. I have been watching this stock for a long time and today I pulled the trigger and put it in my portfolio. UA at first glance appears to be in a down trend, but there are a lot of indicators telling a different story. On the Weekly chart not shown, the 10 and 30 day moving average never crossed indicating a sell. On the daily chart the most important signs is the higher pivot low and todays price closed above the last pivot high. So now we are guaranteed and higher pivot high somewhere down the road. Now if we supplement price indicators with our oscillators, we have several confirmation to help us decide to buy. The PSAR fired a buy the first day of the trading year. The CMO fired off on 1/9/12 and the MACD fired off 12/29/11 in December. The Stochastic fired on 1/4/12. So after todays break above the last high, I decided enough was enough and took a chance with UA. The risk for me on UA on a single transaction is 4.28%, but my total risk on the entire investment portfolio is just .68%. I think that is worth the risk.

Stock update and current moves.

Within the first 1 minute of the open today I got bumped out of FMER for a 7.63% profit. I wasn’t real please with that, but a stop loss is a stop loss and it is suppose to take the emotion out of the game. Funny thing is I do not remember moving my stop loss from $15.83 to 16.01. The daily shown here, you can see a bull flag forming and price is bouncing on the bottom of the flag. I squeezed my stop loss just below that flag and got bounced. The ParabolicSar looks like tomorrow it will fire a sell also. The only other negative is that volume appears to be shrinking. Now if you look at the moving averages they are still good and still indicate a buy, but everything to me looks like it is going to roll over. So I took the profit and banked it. Is that wrong? Never wrong to take a profit the last time I checked. I will keep this in my list and if that bull flag pans out, I will repurchase the stock. The weekly chart, not shown, still looks strong and I expect this stock to actually stall then take off again.

One of the two stocks that I wrote up over the weekend did exactly what I wanted it to do this morning at the open, so my order was fired. I bought FCX @ $43.04 as soon as the bell rung. I wanted to buy it as it passed through $42.70, but it open up at $43.04 with a high of $43.29 and closed at $43.07. My stop loss was set immediately after it was purchased because it was part of my order and that was set at $41.39.

Saturday December 31, 2011 I made mention of a few stocks that I was watching and one of those broke big today with price and volume. Along with that the MACD crossed over to the positive and if you look at price, it has been consolidating since 12/5/11. I made some markings on the daily chart to note the things that caught my attention. Unfortunately, stock price closed .17 cents below what I paid for it, but we got to give it time to pan out.

Brief update on my other positions. HD, Home depot still climbing but MACD crossed over and is looking weak. On the Weekly chart it still looks strong. My only fear is that volume appears to trailing off and it may fall fast at any moment. I will keep my stop loss tight on this one. Ford, F, on the Weekly chart is just getting started on this new up trend and I just hope that it will run a bit before it does any pullbacks. Daily it looks like it wants to pullback and rest a bit but it is just to early to tell. General Electric, GE is starting to rollover. I got a sell signal with the PAR and the MACD. It is possible that GE is forming a bull flag and is just resting for the next leg up, but only time will tell. GE is a watch if your outside looking in. Under Armor, UA, looks like it might not pan out for me. I just bought this position last week so it has no legs yet. I need price to hold above $75.06 in order to have any hope that this was not just a head fake.

These are all the latest moves as of today and you can open the chart below to see every transaction risk and reward below.