Trades of the Week: Feb 12 - Feb 16, 2024

SMCI saved what was a pretty frustrating week which was full of near misses and whiffed trades.

As I wrote in last week's recap, I'd been kicking myself over selling SMCI way too soon.  So it was already on my radar.  I'd also see it every night when I ran my scans because I always look at the Parabolic Rise scan.  I mostly track the parabolic runners for shorting candidates but sometimes, as you'll see below for longs as well.  The parabolic shorts are some of my favorite trades but they're tricky to execute well... and I'm happy to snatch profits quickly and run before they can snap back.

The more days in a row I saw SMCI on there the more I thought it was due for a drop.  A couple of days ago when it crossed $800 I texted a friend that "I guess they're gonna take it to $1,000".  Well that $1,000 level got hit & surpassed yesterday.  That's a nice round number & those can often become support or resistance.  I was also emboldened by a couple of analysts who came out yesterday & today with price targets of 960 & 1040.  I just took that as another sign that things had gotten ridiculous & overheated.

So when I saw SMCI gapping up yet again I *had* to try shorting it.  I was able to hit it at $1,064.  I had a mental stop of just over $1,100 but my plan was to just try to hold it until the afternoon.  I was prepared for it to spike higher but I felt pretty confident that *they* couldn't run it up much more without it having a decent pullback first.  Well, I pretty much nailed the top! My sale was at 9:36 for $1,064.68 per share.  It got as high as $1,077 a few minutes after I shorted it but then it rolled over hard & never looked back

I covered half of my shares at 10:05 @ 886.76 and covered the other half at 828.10 after  it hit an air pocket in the afternoon. 

That trade netted me almost 6 times my initial risk(6R) and helped to push my YTD return up to 26.5%

And here's why the rest of the week before that was so frustrating.  I held a few positions over the weekend and they didn't do much at all.  I also initiated a few other trades which didn't do much.  But I passed on a trade in HOLO which would have been a huge winner. 

This actually got onto my radar because it appeared on the Parabolic Rise scan late last week and it was on the percentage gainers list.  On last Friday (the 9th) it showed up on a few scans that I check daily:

While it didn't trigger an entry the next session it did make another Calm After Storm:

I remember seeing it that night and thinking that it really seemed primed for another push higher.  But then I looked at the company's description and saw that it was a Chinese company.  Many Chinese stocks have crazy moves & get halted and I decided that I didn't want to risk getting trapped in HOLO due to a halt.  Today I'm feeling like I need to rethink my approach.  Perhaps I should still take these setups but with smaller size.

My other frustrations this week were due to two failed trades in NNOX.  I commented on it yesterday morning when I saw it gapping up:

Here's the chart showing both of my trades:

While this was really frustrating I do feel good about the fact that I'm "fishing in the right ponds".  I've just got to tighten up the execution a bit.  Better / different stop loss placement would have kept me in the initial trade and I'd be sitting on about a 100% gain in NNOX.  My account would probably be up 50 or 60% YTD if not for these mismanaged & missed trades.