Swing Trading Results for the Week Ending 05-23-2008

day_trader's picture
May 23, 2008 by day_trader

I closed the week out well; putting on 4 swing trades this week and making a profit on all of them.  I fortunately timed the pullback in the market correctly which allowed me to take decent gains down on my short positions. 

I traded CSCO, FWLT, NVDA, and CCJ this week.  I made two cents on NVDA so I wont even discuss that here. 

CSCO broke down with volume through an uptrend line and I saw a crossover in my moving averages accompanied with a spike in the ADX.  I took the short and it went against me by a little and then went down 5% from that peak.  I was thinking about holding all my shorts a bit longer but the DOW hit my first target of 12450 today as I suggested in my earlier blog posts and I did not want to get greedy.  I took the profit before the long weekend and will reassess the charts this weekend to see where the setups lie.  CSCO was a gain of 2.7%.

FWLT was another short I put on Tuesday.  This one is a bit more volatile and it actually went against my by a couple percent but did not stop me out.  It ended up getting very close to my target of about 71.15 and put in a reversal formation so I got out in the low 72's for a gain of 4.5%.

Swing trading is much easier for me than day trading as you can have wider stops and allow yourself to participate in the larger move.  I find with day trading that I get stopped out of my positions due to a knee jerk reaction, only to see it go significantly further in the direction I anticipated it to do so.  Therefore, I am day trading and looking for smaller gains now, and letting my swing trades make the bulk of my profits.  Don't get me wrong, I still day trade and make money doing it, but in this market environment, swinging can bring  larger gains.

The third trade, which I put on near the close yesterday, is CCJ.  This is a uranium play and I shorted a backtest of a broken uptrend line with my indicators telling me that the upside was limited.  It may run lower but again, I wanted to close out the week with gains that I had.

All in all, a good week and I need to continue being very picky in the stocks that I choose and stick to my game plan. 

Have a great memorial day weekend!