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Strategies & Market Trends : LastShadow's Position Trading -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: just bearly who wrote (9469)	3/2/1999 3:44:00 PM
From: LastShadow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 43080

"I have been following the gap strategies posted on the Mach6 site for awhile. I find this strategy to be reliable and regularly profitable." Thanks, I wrote those for them. "Lately, my frustration is at entering a gap play at the target price with the stock looking very strong or weak as the case may be, only to have it go my way a 1/8 or 3/16 and then promptly reverse enough to stop me out." Although you didn't mention the stocks for which this occurred, if thatis a consistent patten with the ones you are picking, set the Gap entry point another tick or two above what you are presently using. the other cue would be to watch the number of trades at that tick level and the size of the trade. if its just a few hundred shares, at any rate fewerthan 3-5 trades less than 1000 shares, you might want to wait for a 'stronger' buy signal (ie, that kind of volume and number of trades) "Then I usually scream a little and feel bad for being twice shy about getting in the stock again." Alien, have you been coaching people on how to trade emotionlessly again? Actually, the other key is to visit the stocks trading history for the last similar gap or two and see if the spread for those days andthe two subsequent ones shoed a selloff or follow through. If the trade is a solid gap play, set the limits and let it run through its oscillation, and try to keep to more heavilily traded/greater volume stocks. lastshadow

To: just bearly who wrote (9469)	3/3/1999 9:31:00 AM
From: Jay Lyons	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 43080

Tara- Scott's replies to your post are on the money, follow his advice dispassionately and you'll make money. I do not set 4% stops, because I am unable to be dispassionate if my trade goes that far against me. I use 1 point because a loss at level represents about 1% of my trading equity, I can live with that kind of loss. If I were able to handle it, I'm sure that I would make more with looser stops. Scott's advice on reversing the position is very important, failing to do so turned what should have been a big winner for me yesterday into a loser. I had long positions in both QNTM and AOL yesterday, which I sold at a loss. In both cases, had I sold the positions when they hit their sell signals and shorted, I would have lost less on the long trades and had great short trades. Further, because I was nursing these two positions, I missed the sell signals that occured in other stocks. BCST was on my screen, and I would have taken it short if I had switched to shorts in my other positions. Jay