Charts and Coffee

One Month Replay and Going Forward

Charts and Coffee — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:20:55 +0000

One strategy I’ve been employing lately is buying strength. While many have been successfully “buying the dip",” buying the dip can kill you if you’re wrong. I often prefer buying strength. Buying when the market is up and internals are strong. I only started buying this rally on March 2nd. I mentioned that it was tempting [...]

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My Favorite Kind of Trading

Charts and Coffee — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 20:37:50 +0000

I’ve been doing my favorite kind of trading over the past two days. I haven’t made any trades and I’ve just been letting profits accrue. Last week I was about 15% invested and I pushed the throttle up to 25% invested (all long, no hedges). I’ve been flipping through my positions and I want some [...]

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Volatility and Demand For Stock

Charts and Coffee — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:00:00 +0000

I’m putting myself out there a little bit with this post. I had a very simple thought today about the relationship between volatility and demand for stocks. “Wow, I can’t believe CC has not put 2+2 together before.” I’m surprised I’ve never had this thought before, but I’ll share it for the benefit of others [...]

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Is The Sophisticated Retail Trader The Dumbest Of All?

Charts and Coffee — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:00:00 +0000

Whenever I cruise the world of trading blogs, one common theme I often read about is how the government is propping up the market and that impending doom is coming to the stock market. Many of these posts come from individuals with substantial trading experience. It might come from a well known blogger or posters. Here [...]

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Plugging the IBD 100 into my Trading Themes

Charts and Coffee — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 16:46:55 +0000

This post is an addendum to yesterday’s post on big picture trading themes. I picked up a copy of the IBD 100 today. IBD is a great way to shortcut the process of locating momentum stocks and I highly recommend investing $3 to pickup a copy on Saturday morning. The point of this post is [...]

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Investing Themes: Identifying Primary Trends and Secondary Trends

Charts and Coffee — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 18:39:54 +0000

When I trade, I always try to keep a bigger picture in mind. While I trade on technicals, I still do keep a broader fundamental view. But unlike fundamental traders, I let the technicals tell me what the major trends/themes are and then I may read up a bit to understand the bigger picture. Many [...]

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CNO, BAC, MA

Charts and Coffee — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:42:32 +0000

CNO was a member of my secondary offering portfolio. Yesterday we got a clean breakout. I would expect this one to have a flag consolidation and I’ll be looking to add a position during the consolidation. BAC is similar to GE which I currently own. It has been in consolidation since August. People are [...]

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Catching a Wave

Charts and Coffee — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:07:42 +0000

To make money this year, I’m going to need to catch at least two waves. I’m defining a wave as a period of time where the major market indexes trend without correction (ie., a shakeout). Here is a visual: In 2009, the big wave was from March-May. There was another good opportunity during July-August. There [...]

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AXTI

Charts and Coffee — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 14:50:54 +0000

AXTI is a stock I mentioned when it was about $2.25 or so. It is now trading at $3.35. I have posted the long term chart to show the longer term saucer pattern and subsequent breakout. This is the reason I put AXTI on my radar in the first place. I caught a moderate [...]

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CTSH and V

Charts and Coffee — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 14:57:19 +0000

For those not paying attention, IWM is looking to make a new closing high and did take out the January intraday high yesterday. One advantage of writing a blog is that I have a clean trading diary anytime I want to go back and reflect on my thoughts and ideas. I decided to go [...]

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