Milking the STOCK cows - learning the ins and outs

[cwn6161]

adaseb - yeah, I'm working on figuring how to handle that

tmanbone - I'm confused by what you said.
"Gap plays are buy/sell back to the open. Don't wait on price to get back before you take the trade"

A gap is when the OPEN of today is different than the CLOSE of yesterday. I trade in the direction of the gap to fade, so I don't think I'm waiting too long to get in. When it starts to fade the gap, and is within the BZ, I go.

I think AAPL may be a cow I can't quite milk yet, maybe I'll try with a few less volitile stocks and see if things perk up.

[TheRumpledOne]

AAPL IS A COW.

Volatility is what makes a cow a cow!!

The fade the gap, trade towards the previous close.

[cwn6161]

TRO, do you think this method may work better for someone who is new to the system?

Trade the top 3-5 stocks with the highest statistics of fading their gaps, using the BZ as the entry point and only trading to fade the gap. As an added measure, only trade the stocks when their gaps are .5 or greater. That way, I have the same amount of movement potential as AAPL (.5 or more) while keeping a higher statistic for the gap to fade ( I forget off the top of my head what stats AAPL has to fill its gap).

[TheRumpledOne]

The answer is NO! You sound like Yale material.

Trade THE SAME STOCK over and over and over again for 3 months.

If you are successful, you will not want to trade anything else.

[tmanbone]

adaseb - yeah, I'm working on figuring how to handle that

tmanbone - I'm confused by what you said.
"Gap plays are buy/sell back to the open. Don't wait on price to get back before you take the trade"

A gap is when the OPEN of today is different than the CLOSE of yesterday. I trade in the direction of the gap to fade, so I don't think I'm waiting too long to get in. When it starts to fade the gap, and is within the BZ, I go.

I think AAPL may be a cow I can't quite milk yet, maybe I'll try with a few less volitile stocks and see if things perk up.

OK I'm with you now, I see what you are doing. So for example your trading AAPL. AAPL closes Fri @ 222.20 your waiting for the open Mon.
Mon AAPL opens at 220.00, now you're waiting on AAPL to head up .10 and enter with Fri close as target 1. Is this how you are trading the open?
Take TRO's advise he has been trading 30+ years, the buy zone and AAPL are his favs, after his morning session of fx. I looked at TRO's Milk the Cow filter over at stockfetcher and the top 4 are PCLN, BIDU, GOOG, FSLR. The object is to pick one and trade it and only it. This is how you get to learn a stocks personality.

[cwn6161]

TRO - roger that, I'll keep at it. Just discouraged a bit when AAPL trades in a tight range, and I get stopped out 4-6 times, trading only in the gap direction and trying to scalp.

tmanbone - you've got it! AAPL still works well, the spreads on GOOG and BIDU are bigger.

[newschool]

I am a stock trader myself and play gaps often too.

But I wouldn't be interested by AAPL right now.

Here is what I look for, its an actual trade that I took with call Options to juice up a little the profits :




Oh and since i'm lazy, I just check the stockcharts' MostActives to find interesting trades. Its updated live for free on their homepage.

[cwn6161]

Here's AAPL from this morning. The chart is lying about the open - my data says the open was really 227.64. I took a long towards the gap from 227.79 to 227.95. Was I right in getting out so fast? I thought I saw the movement stop, and I figured it was the best time to get out.

I'm trying to figure out when the movement has ended in the direction I'm currently trading.

[newschool]

What you are doing here is more scalping than T.A....

But if you aim to close the gap, why not have TP right at the last close?

[cwn6161]

You are correct - I was scalping. TRO has suggested before that one should aim for small scalps in the beginning when milking the cows - that if the price stops moving in your direction you want to get out. I was looking to see if I made a good call based on the 1 min charts, or if I should have held longer.