WUBA Trade on Apr 21, 2015 09:49 from tee: Tradervue User Stock Trades.

Day chart: gap up

Buy: ORB - 1st bar high, 3rd test the high, 4th breaks through. Entered on 4th bar using on stop buy .05 above high although I could tell by the price action that it would go. On a losing streak so I wanted to buy confirmation vs anticipation (took 3 anticipation losses in a row yesterday).

Sell: action slowed down on 6th bar. I let it consolidate a bit after previous 2 monster green bars and used the low of the consolidation range (73.78) spotted using 1 min charts. Was using a mental stop during the run cuz price was swinging on .20 wide bid/ask. I should have entered a hard stop when the range was determined and instead saw a one tick spike down to 73.40. By the time my order hit i got filled on the rebound at 73.46.

Lessons: remember what worked about this - gap up + ORB on 4th bar
when trailing my stop out I did see the proper stop price but should have used hard stop to protect against quick, sudden movements.

** just had this idea - my loose stop technique gave back $0.84 from the highs, meaning I missed the top anyways by $0.84. That's the same as selling at $73.46 on the way up and then seeing the top hit at 74.30 then come back down. Both techniques would have had the same mental consequences - missing the highs by $0.84. But on the way up is just a guess. When I see a consolidation at least it's a more technical place to sell but I squeeze out more of the move.

In this case the price is at an equilibrium. The math says selling here is the same as seeing another $0.84 spike then stopping out here later anyways. But the protection is that if the stock goes lower I'm not at risk of selling for $0.54 lower.

The principle is that 50% odds stock goes up for break even. 50% odds stock goes down for net loss. Play the odds and take even money while you have it.

This is a more efficient exit if im not going to scale out on the way up.