ARQL Trade on Apr 9, 2012 09:48 from ckz8780: Tradervue User Stock Trades.

Here are my original notes on this:

Flag break, 700 shares. This was a slow moving stock so I set my initial stop at $7.99. The initial risk to reward wasn't very good but it was a strong pattern on the daily chart and weekly it had upside to over $9 with resistance at $8.23 dating back to 2007. I got an initial pop to the resistance point, then a second pop to $8.27, then the stock went flat for a while at $8.20. I sold at $8.20 out of boredom with it and because the market was choppy and I didn't want to hold it overnight. I made < $10 after commissions but a few minutes after I sold it ran again to $8.27 and this time broke through, running to $8.32. I should have been more patient with this one (or sold on the spike to $8.27), but I was just bored and the market was flat. To avoid this kind of play in the future I am going to try to give slow moving stocks at least 30 minutes past my normal “boredom threshold” (which I'm learning seems to be a few hours) before selling, since I always seem to sell right before the break happens and I get my original target.

In retrospect (a week later) I have some new thoughts:

This really wasn't that strong of a pattern on the daily. It was decent, but already quite extended and wasn't really clear as to where I should enter. There was technically a breakout at $8.19 from early Feb which explains my entry of $8.17 (in anticipation of the breakout) but there was also resistance at $8.23. It probably would have been better to let this one consolidate a little, because even though it ran to $8.32 my stop was $7.99 which gave me 18 cents of risk from my buy and only 15 cents of gain. Regardless of the fact that it could potentially run to $9 on the weekly it was unlikely to do that especially after being up 4-5 days in a row. Anyway, I made a small profit on it so no big deal. Just learn from it for next time!