Another green day recap and more holes in my game that I need to work on. I definitely feel like I’m getting more comfortable with my new size and the confidence to take on plays with it, however I’m still working on the balance of edge when it comes to entries and sizing which I will talk about a little bit lower specifically on $STAF. P/L wise this is definitely one of my better days, however a couple of things about HOW I achieved this nice day don’t sit quite right with me. As always I’m looking to continue improving, and I’ll dive a little bit into it below on my thoughts on the tickers.
SPI
Heck of a trade here. It’s always good to #KWYO and this is the prime example of what being prepared can do. Now with all of that being said I played with my size of yesteryear because I remember the ripper day and didn’t want to let myself get carried away. In hindsight I should’ve located more and added into the confirmation, however I’m happy with the trade overall and even with small’ish size a 3pt move is a 3pt move.
STAF
So let me start with the positive of this trade before I get into what I can do better.
First of all I had this on my scan last night, so when I woke up and saw the 4am push to $2 I knew we were going to have some fun today, so I located some. I’m glad that I did because the locates were scarce after a while.
Secondly I’m happy about my patience. I had a big picture idea in my head of what this one was going to do, and I stuck to it and because of that I was able to let this thing play out almost all day and catch a bunch of the fade.
Lastly the big thing here is that I’m feeling more comfortable with my “big picture” ideas. Being able to take the trade in the context of the overall move has completely changed how I look at some of this stuff and opened me up to be prepared for quite a bit more. I’m sure that as I accumulate more screen/seat time I’ll gain a better grasp of the big picture ideas and will continue to improve on them.
Now with that being said I did a little bit too much on the “front”side of the move. Granted you can’t tell how much size I put on because of the arrows, but I was too much sized in on the front side, which basically made this move a 1:1 R/R play. Looking at this chart there’s absolutely no way I should’ve had a 1:1 R/R on this…that’s ridiculous, that’s sad….that’s something that has to be fixed.
I started off good in the premarket and really should have been locking in profits along the way. Once again like yesterday I see some higher lows coming into the picture and volume starts to ramp up and based on the shares that I have I should be trimming down to prepare for the move. Especially given the float:volume ratio and the rotation that was happening. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned this year is that you can’t underestimate the move when you have a large float:volume rotation before the open. Given that I saw this (and i even told myself to watch it) I have to stop being so stubborn about sizing down. I don’t think that it’s necessarily me wanting to catch the top, but more so I don’t want to lose the size that I’ve been working so hard to start adding on. In reality too much size in the wrong spot is how you get “blew’d up”, so this is a delicate balance that I have to come to grip with mentally. Yes I still had some left for the backside, but realistically my ratio should have been completely flipped around in terms of size on front vs backside.
Overall I’m happy with the big picture idea, but I’m NOT enthused about my front side execution (lack of trimming to be prepared). Float:volume ratio will be HEAVILY in the forefront of my mind on these types of “perennial fade” setups.