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IDT had some big volume on the 02/27 reversal. Not looking pretty, but then again, who knows it may still rise. It will probably keep falling until you sell and then move up sharply...can't recall exactly how many times that has happened to me.
Something else that looks interesting and has been receiving some attention is ZOES.
yes...it still may rise but frankly I like the other companies on my watch list better.
See how the Slo Sto and MACD have been in decline since Feb 17?.... Now the BBwidth is hinting at rising. This is the beginning of a sell signal.
Effective immediately @10:20MST I am raising my limit stop-loss range on IDT CORP from $20.90 - $20.99 to a new range of $21.24 - $21.29
it still gives it some wiggle room to rise higher though I doubt it will do so for long.
As far as ZOE'S Kitchen INC [NYSE:ZOES] goes... I find that your stock picks are a bit too late for me (no disrespect here meant)
By that I mean you seem to be coming in after a run is over and the stock is in consolidation as shown in the blue box.
The Slow Sto is still bullish... the MACD is completely neutral (flat) and the BBwidth has ended its rise with a slight neg slope.
From my experience, the share price usually gravitates to the 20daySMA (green dotted line). Right now it is moving sideways which is the best way to meet that SMA. If you see the MACD and SLOW Sto start to decline...it is ok as long as the BBWidth continues to fall... (Bollies getting tighter)
The time for the next jump is when the BBwidth gets down to a value of 10 or so for this stock. At this time the MACD and Slow Sto will have reversed its decline and have a positive slope ... then the BBwidth will rise to "trigger" the bullish run. (look at green circle)
IF the MACD and Slow Sto continue to decline when the BBwidth jumps positive... that is a sell (or perhaps a short... I don't short) signal.
Right now it is too unpredictable for me. If you look at those in my watch list...90% of those are in situations where the MACD and SLOW Sto are rising but the BBWidth is flat or slight neg slope. I want to catch that beginning of a bull run and ride that sucker.
EDIT: Well I set that Stop-loss for IDT quite tight and the order tripped about an hour after I made the above statement... So I sold these 500 shares of IDT at $21.29/share... Now I have money to make better choices from that watch list
These are the comments from yesterday... I will make new comments for today (with 2 hours left in the trading day) on any significant changes
March 5 @ 12.18MST
Ticker ... Cur Price .... Comments .......................................................................................... Status
HRTG
Well I said "any day now" and that day is today... look at the chart below
You can see it gapped well over the upper Bollie... Now this stock has been flatlined so long there will be no pullback of significance to my mind. I just traded away my IDT stock and I don't think I could find a better place.
Here is an intra-day chart of today's action
I believe it will fall back slightly at the end
I will put in a Limit bid for 500 shares of [HRTG:NYSE] @ 21.25/share
I am stopping here in this post right now and will continue on in the next post.
Well that was fun.... let us see how the others on that watchlist are doing
Ticker ... Cur Price .... Comments .......................................................................................... Status
AHH ........... $10.65 ......... I made a mistake in the previous price it was $10.73 ......... Still possible but?
........................................ not $10.33. looking worse now, MACD and Slow Sto
........................................ have a neg slope... looks bearish now
WEN ........... $11.00 ......... the share price still saying on same price but the decline ...... Doubtful now
......................................... of the Slo Sto and MACD increasing??? looks bearish
EBSB ............ $12.58 ......... tried to break out..pulled back a bit, very good chance ...... Any day now
........................................... for a bullish break out...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ANOTHER STOCK IN BREAKOUT...Confirmed
BKEP .............. $7.71 ......... tried for a huge gain but pulled back to upper bollie ....... Breakout confirmed!!
........................................... I am going to try for a purchase of 1000 shares
PIP ................ $1.77 ......... looks like the breakout is happening...just one resistance ..... Breaking out now?
........................................... on the horizon at 1.83 which it tested and fell back
Quite funny how we try and accomplish the same but have two very different ways of interpreting what we see. If ZOES consolidates now and tightens up, I will become very interested. I would like another week (or more) of consolidation at least and I would like to see it gently drift down to the 20. If it can then break through a most recent high, I will start buying. I need a stock to show some RS before my scans pick them up, so I generally see them after a strong move and sometimes consolidations start and give me a chance to consider them.
The one downside of ZOES is that a lot of people are looking for the next CMG. Thus, with all the attention on it, it may be volatile and stop me out multiple times even if it is a big mover. Thus, I am still al little wary.
Regarding IDT, your entry seemed a little late for me (usually you seem to be earlier). My ideal buy point would have been at 20.53. I was very interested in IDT, but since I missed that point, I let it go. Still on my watchlist, but right now I am a little wary. If it can tighten up an consolidate above its 20 and 50 day, I may buy some if it breaks above 23 or 23.34 (depends on how it consolidates). I am also a little worried in that there is no real increase in quarterly sales. Sales seem flat and I really like to see that increase. Earnings out on 3/9, so that my change my view.
In any case, I just provided some names since you said you had difficulty identifying stocks in the US market and I generally need to trim my watchlist down significantly. However, right now it seems that you are finding several.
Maybe this is answered in your other journal, but how many stocks do you like to have in your portfolio? Also, what is your ideal exposure? It seems like the current portfolio is close to 100%, is that your usual exposure? How do you determine how much to allocate to a stock? I saw the IDT position is smaller, but I am not sure why.
When I first started this journal I had a great difficulty finding suitable stocks and I chose IDT as part of this portfolio as it was the only other one at the time that looked half decent to me... it was not a good choice and is the reason I have bailed on it. here.
I resurrected an old screener I used to play with years ago to find the current stocks in the watch list in this journal and these are more typical of stocks that interest to me.
As far as ZOES goes, you did not say WHY the stock was of interest to you and what would be a buy situation for you. It seemed with SZMK and ZOES you were looking at stocks at or near the end of a bullish run and entering or had entered a consolidation period... Stocks of this type are very unpredictable as a new BUY and the only thing consistent I have found is that they tend to gravitate to their 20daySMA until the bollies get tight and are ready for another major movement... I am not interested in such stocks as new buys as there are too many in that situation to watch.... I tend to focus on those that are days away from a major movement potentially as defined by approaching a Bollie squeeze (indicated by a minimum BBwidth)... then I can catch them very close to their breakout.
I will monitor and keep these stocks through a consolation though if I like the stock and its other charts that I use.
These fantasy journals reflect my real holdings very much. These fantasy ones on this site at about $100,000 starter points are much smaller than my real portfolios. I live off of the gains from my portfolios in real life. Other than two small government pensions which basically cover rent... I have NO other income.
You cannot live on the gains of a $100,000 or $200,000 (2 fantasy portfolios) and increase your holdings. Typically I make something like 10-15% on my real portfolios AFTER subtracting out my living expenses. Could you live on $10,000 - $15,000 /year??.... even double that for 2 portfolios....if you could then you could never increase your holdings as you would be spending every nickel your holdings generated and heaven help you in a bad year.
So these portfolios on this website are simply demonstrations that money can be made as a long term trader of which there doesn't seem to be many (visible ones anyway) on this website.
What you see IS very typical of how I manage my real portfolios. I do not use hind sight on this website and announce my potential transactions usually the day before ...if not then I state the time of day that I make my post on decisions when I make a quick decision to buy/sell. This is as real as I can make it.
The number of shares I initially purchase varies with the cost of the stock and how confident I am of its future. I generally want 1000 shares at least in any stock I own.... you make decent coin on 1000 shares... on stocks worth less that $5/share (Canadian stocks have many good ones in this range... difficult to find good ones in American stocks) I will buy 2,000 to 5,000 as an initial buy... in the $5-$20 range I will buy 1000 - 3000 as an initial buy, if they are higher than $20 I will buy 500 - 1000 shares. I never buy less than 500 shares of anything However, if things are very bullish and cash is available I would on higher priced stocks add 100 -200 shares as the stock rises.
I am usually fully invested in any portfolio I really own, though given the weird market of late in reality I am only 50-70% invested now. I collect and withdraw living expenses as needed from sales of any stock and/or dividends generated ( I love high dividend paying Canadian stocks).
I don't have any real interest in discussing my real holdings in this journal or my Canadian Journal. It is not the point of my writing here. I want to demonstrate that the investing world is not simply day trading so I take a reasonable amount of money ($100,000) and show that one can create and grow a long term portfolio. I have a different type of TA that I use and to me it is not a secret that I hide. Most new traders and some older ones don't use TA or use it properly IMHO. It took me 20 years of study to get to where I am today and as you can see recently, I am not above making changes when I learn something better (adding Force(100) is an example of that).
Please do not harp on what I do in reality.... I had that happen to me in my other journal and he would not stop so he is on ignore.
this is just an update on two stocks that I put bids on late in the day yesterday with about about 2 hours before closing
here is an intraday chart for Heritage Insurance Holdings Inc. [NYSE:HRTG]
As you can see in the circle the price fell below this mark for most of the last 2 hours so I would have gotten my Bid... and now it has taken off nicely.
here is an intraday chart for Blueknight Energy Partners G.P. LLC [NASDQ:BEKP]
This stock as well, as you can see in the circle had a share price fell below this mark for most of the last 2 hours so I would have gotten my Bid... and now it has taken off nicely as well.
As far as a decision on PIP goes that is still on-going as it shows no sign of breaking out yet as of 9:10MST.
Yeah, I understand I should have mentioned a little bit more on ZOES. I try to say as little as possible in order not to interfere with your trading, since this is your journal as as mentioned before, it looks poised to do quite well. SZMK was not my suggestion - it breaks so many of my requirements that I would not touch it with a 10-foot pole.
One of the things that attracted me was the "long term" added to your journal name. In my experience, shorter term trading opens up so many pitfalls that can be avoided by holding longer term. Thus, very much in favour of longer term trading and can say that in my case it has helped reduce needless losses significantly.
Thank you for sharing the information on your capital growth. While I have no clue about your living expenses, I doubt most daytraders make 10%-15% per annum before expenses (with the exception of probably a handful of traders). Those returns are excellent and definitely provide motivation for me to grow my capital base (still working but tend to not save as much as I could). If most traders would just deposit 10% of their salaries and adopt a longer term approach combined with cutting losses, I believe the failure rate of 95% would go down significantly.
Thank you for describing how you decide on the sizing of your buys. I suspected as much, but just wanted to confirm whether you have a mechanical way of making these decisions. It seems that successful traders all have some discretion built into their trading and never completely rely on mechanical triggers.
The other thing that attracted me to this journal was your chosen name - Underexposed. Most traders here would definitely not be underexposed. I have seen some excellent results from a trader with very low exposure (25%-50% on average) who might ramp it up to 100% exposure once or twice a year. This lead to some extremely low drawdowns on the account while still beating the markets substantially, and I still try to incorporate that into my trading.
Regarding your real holdings, no need to discuss those. I am merely interested in following your journal and seeing the results unfold over time. Regarding your TA, it is what works for you and I have already learnt something. As said before, we have the same approach (long term hold but with stop-losses) and yet we both see things completely differently. Neither way is right nor wrong, they are just different.
In any case, I hope both your real-life holdings and journals do well. With your new resurrected screen you have quite a few ideas and I doubt you needed much help in me pointing out potential buys. So might go back to monitoring my own portfolio for a while.
There are more than one way to do TA... that is why I do like to see how others do theirs so that I can cherry pick what I like and add it to the way I do things...hence the addition of FORCE(100) which found discussed here somewhere and decided to investigate it more...I am still learning how to use it more effectively but already it seems better than CMF.
we do have different approaches but I do like to discuss stocks from my perspective and that can be useful.
Every Thursday evening my brother and I discuss stocks for 3 hours on skype. He at first (3 years ago) did not think much about TA in general. He is a digger of hard news (not market fluff). Over time I have won him over, though he still refuses to learn TA... but that is a good thing... during our 3 hour sessions he presents his picks for the week and asks me to "cast my bones" over them
I have "stolen" many good stocks from his picks. We review what I see and I listen to what he has to say and our consensus on a stock is usually excellent.... two opposing methods combine for great results often as not.
So don't feel that I don't want to discuss stocks....I do ... however, when you do (or any other person who wishes to do so) tell me what attracts that stock to your attention. If you leave it to my imagination I am often wrong in my views of why you would choose a pick but if you say why you like it I may see something I would have missed and gained an insight I never had before.
That is how it works with my brother and I anyway.
