One Good Trade ($PLCM)

BellaMike Bellafiore's (Bella's) Blogs7 Comments

I struggled with RVBD. I struggled in LRCX. Same with CREE. And ABT. And BAX. My EBAY trade did not work out as I expected. Nor CRUS. I was sitting in my office a few minutes ago talking to a frustrated mentee saying:

“I cannot seem to make money in anything.”
“Others around me seem to be making money except me.”

As you can see above there is a lot for me to be frustrated about with my trading if not for catching PLCM. Yesterday there was a lot for me to be frustrated about with my trading if not for catching ABT.

The truth not seen on cable TV is professional traders are wrong an awful lot. If you listened to all of our trades you could walk away wondering what the heck we were doing during certain trades if you focused on our results. Often my inner voice says to me Bella what the heck are you doing. This is a weird sport being wrong so much. It is against human nature to voluntarily live in a world of so much personal failure. Frankly there are periods of self-doubt that very few long term traders ever admit. How can there not be since our feedback is worse than a nagging wife for so much of what we do.

I have blogged and written in published text about this trading set up in the past (See The StockTwits Edge). Stock In Play. Breaks a range after doing significant volume intraday. Room to run after the break on our technical charts. This is a Trade2Hold in which we do not sell unless there is a Reason2Sell. Buy PLCM at 15, after it clearly breaks above the top of the intraday range of 85c, stops below 17.75 and hold until there is a Reason2Sell. Certainly scale out along the way but hold a core until the uptrend is broken (below 16.50?).

So I shared with that mentee how often I have been wrong the past two trading sessions. After the close yesterday I spent all of my time replaying that ABT trade. After the close today I will ask GMan, who also caught PLCM, to talk to our desk about this trading opportunity. There will not be a long GMan talk about some stock unclear and saturated in all things shakeouts. There will not be a lot of thought on my part thinking of the bad buy I made in LRCX. How could we have traded PLCM better? How did we make money in it? How do we find more trades like it? How do we build from our strengths?

Bella
One Good Trade

disclosure: no relevant position

7 Comments on “One Good Trade ($PLCM)”

  2. there was no responsible way to stay in once it broke 16 and traded down to 15.60. but there was certainly an opportunity to get back in….

  3. “this is a weird sport being wrong so much. It is against human nature to voluntarily live in a world of so much personal failure” 

     Try playing horses for a living, makes daytrading look like a picnic

  4. Could you describe the initial thinking of the trade for me?  What I mean is the stock gapped down and failed to fill the gap.  Shouldn’t we have been looking for opportunities to short?  Was that the initial idea, but then the stock broke the HOD so you had to be flexible in your thinking?  Just trying to understand the initial ideas of the trade. 
     
    thanks…

    Derek

  5. Yes we were short first a few times but that wasn’t working. Above 85c to the whole number and it appeared PLCM was more likely to trade higher next. Thxs for the question.

  6. sounds like another post on trading thoughts / lessons…but so much more. im saving this one. a lot of good insight and things to keep in mind here

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