Stop Loss Selection

How many times were you taken out of a trade just before the stock turns around and takes off in your presumed direction with you as the spring board?  Not pleasant.  So when a friend of mine asked me to help with placing stops I wanted to be clear on the topic since stops are a key risk management skill that traders must have to survive this game.  This article talks specifically about stop losses, not for break even or stop with profits type exits.

The short answer is the same to many trading questions: it depends.  It depends on the style of trading, time frame, risk tolerance, etc.  That’s why system trading is very popular as the trading parameters; entries, exists, stop losses, stops, targets etc, are mostly pre-defined.

So let’s pick a specific scenario/system and take it from there: Swing trading days/weeks hold-time with buying support on signs of strength on the intra-day/daily/weekly/monthly charts review, using close prices.
You are at a point where you have identified your support levels and have your entry area with a good risk/reward ratio selected.  For picking a stop, you have to get familiar with the stock's personality first to see how it behaves around key levels: Look at the history of the stock, does it trade cleanly around key levels or does it violate it before it recovers?   This will help you decide your initial risk, whether to give your stop more room, use a soft or hard stop, or use that stock at all for that matter.  The cleaner the levels the better.

Keep in mind that key levels can also change from day to day when they are an active moving average.  Or when that moving average enters into the trading range of a stock that previously had clearly defined/drawn lines representing key levels, such as channels, breakout levels, etc.

Now that you have your support levels and are more familiar with the stock behavior, you can have a stop that’s lower than the support levels by roughly 0.5-1.5% depending on the price of the stock and how volatile it is.  On shorter term momentum holds, you can enter as close to the low of the day (LOD) as possible with a stop under the LOD.  Breaking the LOD+ and holding there is your signal that there’s more selling to come and the stock is not ready yet to bounce.  In this case either step aside and let the sellers finish their business or if there’s a good short setups play then take the short side of the trade with as many checks in your favor as possible.  Everything that applies for the long side the reverse applies on the short side, just make sure you are going with the trend in the time frame you are trading (many different topics here beyond the scope of this article.)

In addition, keep in mind that you do not have to stop out your entire position at a single level.  You can get out of your position in stages depending on your risk and the strength of the supports.  It does not have to be an all or none type trading depending on your style.

If you have any questions let me know. 

Peace and profits to all,

@stockaddict

The Power of Technical Analysis; A Case in Point Study of the S&P500 Chart.

Technical analysis is a graph of the psychology of the market and should be part of every trader and investor’s arsenal if they don’t want to become road kill on Wall Street. It is a guide to the future empowered by the past and based on human psychology.

Case in point is the SPY500 starting back in 2004 in mid-bubble times. Note that there are other Technical factors contributing to the success of the patterns, such as the 50MA crossing above the 200MA in mid 2004, then below it towards the second half of 2008 and a few others.

(double click on the image to enlarge)

Pattern 1 (orange): This is the key pattern here, The Bump-and-Run-Reversal pattern, BARR (formerly and aptly known as the Bump-and-Run-Formation - BARF) started forming with a speculation phase in the mid 2006 when the market psychology was euphoric and gave a new meaning to irrational exuberance. This pattern was at disbelief at the key breaking levels, but finally succumbed to it. The psychology behind it is valid. Pattern 2 below is also part of the BARR pattern indicating the end of the speculation phase.

Pattern 2 (orange/white/blue): The double top (white) or a Head and Shoulders (blue) topping patterns depending on where you draw the line. Both are bearish topping patterns and both break at around the same level and measure to the same target. This is a sub–pattern that is part of the BARR pattern above, which takes a long time to develop in this time-frame.

Pattern 3 (blue): The typical Head and Shoulders pattern at an angle.

Pattern 4 (yellow): unveiling as we speak, the reverse head and shoulders topping pattern on the weekly time frame. Will it clear the key gap resistance and move to reach its target of ~1200? bounce down from the ~1080 resistance, Or will it stall and create another pattern that will reveal itself with time? (All of the above are possible on different time frames) Plan for all scenarios, and remember that being out of the market at times is also a plan to follow.

You can read more about the actual psychology that forms these patterns in any good technical analysis book. And you can be sure you will see this chart in the next book about The Crash of 2008, in the technical analysis section, maybe my own.

Of course hindsight is 20/20 and it’s easy to talk about these patterns of the past when they have already been drawn, but hindsight is what gives us the confidence in these patterns, especially in the longer time frames, enough confidence for that above than 50% probability we all seek in our trading. So when I see a pattern emerging I create my thesis around it, and trade it, while being cautious around the key levels where I typically look at other indicators to gauge the pulse of the market.

Swing and day traders are in the business of predicting the next move to make money, and technical analysis is the key tool for that.

@Stockaddict

It's a Matter of Time..

Time is a key piece of the puzzle in technical analysis. A lot of the chart analysis you see on the stocktwits stream are for a specific time frame, usually that of the chartist, and not necessarily yours. So before you jump into that trade, check the time-frame of the chart and see if it agrees with yours.

If you are a day trader then you’re looking at the price action down to the minute and don’t care what will happen tomorrow. If you are a swing trader, then you’re looking at the 15/60 minute charts to confirm your thesis and time your entry, but mainly focused on the last few days up to a few weeks of that stock’s action, and perhaps pan out to see where they fit in the big picture. If you are a longer term trader then many weeks, months and years is your target, and you are really focused on the fundamentals and the economic environment at that level, and technical analysis becomes an auxiliary tool and not your main focus.

Due to the time frame differences a lot of people will have conflicting views of the same financial instument, and be both correct. So always clarify your time frame before you make up your mind.

Finally, thanks to all those who chart and take charting requests, I know that the time and effort put into that is significant and the education by example provided to others is much appreciated.

Peace and profits to all.
Stockaddict

Mistakes even the best of us make: Not keeping the trading vehicle in mind..

Reading Wall Street Cheat Sheets excellent article on beginners’ trading mistakes today inspired me to write this little thought dump for all of us to benefit from, beginner and expert traders alike.

1) When I first joined Stocktwits in the beginning of April 09 many traders were using technical analysis on the Direxion Triple ETFs, which reflect triple the daily price movements of indices of specific sectors or markets. FAS and FAZ of the triple financials were favorites. The issue arises from the fact that the math behind the movement of these vehicles creates false chart patterns and misleading technical indicators. These ETFs will not return to the same values when the underlying index does due to the asymmetrical up and down movement of the ETF prices. This is one of many issues that make these ETFs not amenable to technical analysis. For further details refer to the prospectus of these ETFs. Hopefully this will save people some money and agony.  There is an art to trading these leveraged ETFs in addition to day trading vehicles, and I may do another post on how to trade these.  Meanwhile, if your money manager is someone who held these for a long time for whatever reason, consider getting another money manager is not responsible enough to manage your money. 

Solution:

Only use the underlining index of these triple ETFs for charting and technical analysis.

2) The second and most recent issue that is popping up on stocktwits is related to commodity ETFs. The issue comes when traders look for the ETF volume as a valid TA signal especially during a chart breakout as we do for stocks. This is not correct as the volume of the ETF trading vehicle simply means that more traders are interested in buying the ETF itself and does not in any manner reflect the economics of supply and demand of the underlying commodity (volume of the ETF may inadvertently cause pricing issues for the commodity, but this issue is not the scope of this article). Simply said: Volume breakouts of an ETF chart bears no information other than interest in the ETF itself.  The only information that is relevant in TA is the actual commodity price and chart when evaluating your ETF purchase based on TA.

Solution:

Study the underlying commodity for TA to trade the corresponding ETF and not the ETF charts themselves.

I hope this was educational and helps clear up some of the common misunderstandings of trading ETFs. I usually tweet my stock research around midnight Pacific time, but you can always find my setups on stocktwits and sometimes charts posted on chart.ly when time allows.

Peace & profits to all,
@stockaddict