I’ve not been trading much over the last week. Not by choice, just other things getting in the way. I’ve glanced at the markets in the evenings and it doesn’t look like I’ve been missing an awful lot. That is until I looked at what happened Monday…
I had to go into the city for a boring administrative procedure on Monday. I think the last time I went into town was more than six months ago. It doesn’t happen a lot, and rarely by choice. Given how relatively quiet things were last week, I wasn’t too worried about missing much. Then I got home and zapped through a few core stocks to get an indication of what kind of session it had been, and my heart sank.
Hindsight is 20/20 and all that, but look, there were a good couple of entries there. I’m always wary of saying how I would have traded something because unless you’re actually there watching it unfold, it’s more or less impossible to know for sure. But you’d have to say there were four figures to be made from old friend ROKU.
And that was just for starters. Here’s TSLA:
There was a nice short to be had after the price dropped through the previous day’s low. A one-bar-wonder. In and out in five minutes. There was another thousand dollars there.
I rarely trade afternoons, but have a look at Facebook after lunch:
I mean, even before lunch it was looking quite tasty. After lunch it went mad. Even missing the first entry around 13:30 wouldn’t have been a disaster. Given those volume spikes, there’s a strong chance the momo indicators would have hinted at more to come.
Finally, and this one puts everything else into perspective, here’s non-core stock KRTX:
Goodness knows what was going on here. I mean, that stock closed around the $20 mark last week. Then it went from $30+ to touch $100 at one point. Just taking the easiest of easy middles, the most conservative standard entries and exits around 10am, would have netted profits in the region of at least $2000, and probably considerably more, maybe double that. The afternoon was just insane. I don’t even want to think about it. I will console myself by reminding myself that when stocks blow up like that, the huge volatility usually comes with huge slippage and that maybe it wasn’t as easy to make money from as it looks at first glance. Yeah, I’ll keep telling myself that.
Missing good trades is part of the game, I’ve said it dozens of times. We can’t catch them all and it would be folly to try. Missing a day like Monday just to fill in some boring and probably unnecessary forms though — that hurts. Oh well, there’s always another day. That’s the best thing about the markets. Every morning brings new opportunity. A bit like life.