Posted by 29 November 2005

Trades of the Day: GOOG and ISRG

It’s been a good few days for me. I had my second biggest profit today since I’ve been daytrading and last Tuesday was my third highest day thanks to that CMED trade. Today should have been a record day but I bailed out of my shorts a little too soon as that 3:00 head fake got me. I made 14.15 R today. So on an R-Multiple basis my birthday was still much higher with a 18.59 R return that day. (I’ve increased my R since then. It used to be 0.33% of my equity, now it’s 0.5%)

Google was the big winner for me today with a 5.8 R profit. I jumped in it once it broke under 420, thinking that would be decent resistance being a nice round number & all. Also the candle it was making at the time (10:42) provided me with a nice stop loss point at its high. I covered half the shares about 30 minutes later at 412.18 and the rest at 409.87 just before 3:00 when I fell for the okey-doke. I left an easy 6 points on the table. :-(

Here’s the daily chart followed by the intraday:

Here’s ISRG, which I shorted yesterday as well. Yesterday I shorted it at 113.19 and covered at 110.59 for a 5.17 R gain. Today I shorted it as it fell back from the 115 area at 11:07 AM. My entry was at 114.16 and the exit was an average of 111.71 for a 3.24 R gain.

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Comments

  1. Posted by Trader-X on November 29, 2005 at 5:41 pm

    Great trades. Don’t worry about leaving money on the table; you never go broke taking profits.

    Congratulations on a good streak. Best wishes for December.

  2. Posted by Michael on November 29, 2005 at 5:44 pm

    Thanks man! I’m not too upset about getting out too soon. :-)

  3. Posted by Glenn on November 29, 2005 at 6:19 pm

    Nice Trading Mike, keep posting em!

  4. Posted by Michael on November 29, 2005 at 6:25 pm

    Thanks Glenn

  5. Posted by Brian on November 30, 2005 at 1:06 pm

    R=?

  6. Posted by Michael on November 30, 2005 at 1:14 pm

    R is the amount of money I risk per trade. Right now I risk 0.5% of my equity per trade. So yesterday I made 7%. See my position sizing post for more info.

  7. Posted by Anonymous on November 30, 2005 at 1:45 pm

    Thanks Mike. I suppose I should have been more specific. By following this site and reading the position sizing post I know how you calculate the R value based on your equity, however I am curious what that actual value is. Is 14.15R beer money or new car money? :) If you choose not to disclose this info I completely understand.

  8. Posted by Michael on November 30, 2005 at 1:53 pm

    My bad. I’d rather not disclose it but one needs at least $25,000 to day trade so the amount is greater than $1,750.

    Also the reason I give these amounts in R-multiples instead of dollars is because it’s better for comparison purposes. If somebody is trading with $1,000,000 and makes $1,000 in profit that’s far less impressive than making $1,000 with only $50,000 in equity.

  9. Posted by Anonymous on November 30, 2005 at 2:15 pm

    Thanks Mike. Keep up the good work.

  10. Posted by MikeB on December 6, 2005 at 8:25 am

    Mike,

    You noted above that you’ve increased your R from 0.33% to 0.5%. What was behind the decision to increase ? Change in perception of the market ? More confidence in current methodology ?

    – MikeB

  11. Posted by Michael on December 6, 2005 at 8:29 am

    MikeB,

    Yes the main thing was more confidence. Since I started day trading in June my goal was always to work up to an R of 0.5%. I also needed to make more money! :-)