Two weeks ago with the beginning of December I started to change my trading style. You know from the last two articles that I decided to trade more strict to the rules of each strategy and avoid any improvisation or variations. As a consequence, I did close many of my stock positions on Friday.
You can read about the why in this article.
The up-tweeted market
This week the market moved from Monday to Wednesday in a range as I expected. On Thursday it broke out another time to a new high and Friday presented us a fight of bulls and bears which ended with a draw.
With this price action the chance is also higher for a ranging market next week. The momentum is to the upside but indicators are overbought.
I am excited what will happen on Christmas this year for the traders. 😉
All above this section was finished on Sunday and I did not change it.
The following part started on Tuesday. Thanks for your patience and please, excuse the delay.
New trades and closed trades
As I told you here, I traded two approaches with ITRI – each one with half risk. Last week the one with the wide stop reached its target at +2R:
You can see the close and the wide stop in red, the entry for both in yellow and the two green targets in the chart above.
Because of the consolidation around $81 it is possible that much higher prices will be reached but I am happy. Although it should be a kind of decision maker:
What works best for me? And now both approaches were successful. 😉
Why I did close positions …
Of course, sometimes it’s good to sell positions – or just 50% – when price action is far stretched and overbought. But in my case this wasn’t the reason to sell 9 positions last week. Read about why I did close many of my stock positions:
The fact:
As you know, I tried many strategies over the last months and especially during my vacations I started trades with a very low risk and a wide stop loss.
I recognized more and more that these positions need a long, long time until they reach their target or stop. And in addition most of them had sideways movement. No momentum. Or some positions had good movement but then price went sideways over weeks.
Because I want to trade the best setups and really focus on my goal to pay all my bills with my trading account without touching my long term investments, I decided to clean up my portfolio to have more cash available for new positions.
The action:
I won’t explain every exit and show every chart. I just can tell you that there were exits around break even or with just a little profit (LEN, WMT, KWEB), one loss (WEN; another loss is waiting to be closed), some good profits (OMF, LKQ, PFSI, EGP) and one almost hit its target at +2R (NVDA).
The result:
I can tell you: After market close on Friday I felt so good. Yes, because now I have more cash for new trades with perfect setups. And it ended with a good profit, I do have to manage less positions in my account and I am almost there to say that I only have positions I know exactly why I entered, why I am in and why I did not exit already. A very good feeling!
So, I encourage you to do the same!
It’s like cleaning up the basement or the desk. Now I understand more and more why it is so liberating to only have cash in the evening as a day trader.
That’s it for today. I hope you can comprehend why I did close many of my stock positions and maybe you will also check for your “unnecessary” running trades.
I just started to re-view my trading year checking the returns of the months and in general. And maybe I will show you some of my statistics next weekend. 😀
A healthy and happy week for you and thanks for reading!
