I've been up all night - I tried to sleep, but just came back into work.
Regarding Bass's comment on the death cross - for the pennies, I don't worry about it. I posted a longwinded reason why... but can do so briefly - the golden/death crosses are more important to big board stocks, and not in the sense of the individual stocks, but rather the indices, as by definition, the moving averages of the indices can't move upward unless the price action of more than 50% of the stocks is moving upward, likewise for downward, once the averages are in unison, 75% of the stocks should be moving in that direction. That's why you tip the odds in your favor by going with the flow on those.
In the penny case, everything is compressed in time, and pr's come out in different frequencies - compare BEHL and MGLG. Since there is no index, since these are independent, you can only use the stock, and for each stock, these events aren't correlated enough and too short in time to make those averages useful. That's my take. I cut my indicator periods in half, to just get them to match moves since they were noise before... so if you want to play moving averages, we can backtest a handful of stocks, and see if we can come up with some happy medium - ie. make some penny golden/death crosses.
Regarding TA, fundamentals, .etc. It all depends on how each individual trades. You are correct in that pennies will need a different set of factors - ie. that's why I shortened the indicators and believe them less. But, before we go into that, we just have to take the collective parts of what each contributes and develop our own individual trading strategies. I for one, will not average down (we'll at least not more than once, but the first buy has to be very small), or buy into something that has some serious downside on high volume. I cringe when I hear some of the others do that, but they have a completely different trading style than I do, and I respect that. They do know way more about the news and such, and have a better feel for speculation than I do.
Regarding how the TA fits with the news - I still have a question that I haven't followed up on myself... as, a second thing I'm trying to watch, or started watching a while back with SIRI (going into another side thought) is also watching the TA with bulletin board comments.. but back to my question...
Does anyone know if the mention (PR) of the signing of the acquistions precede, were released on, or followed the second trading day in august?
It's the first high volume day following the first run up.
I'm just curious, as we can all learn from this.. as I poke around the boards, seems like some folks are holding on until the signing, but if that news was on that day, or preceded that day, we could have had our run up.
Regarding the elliot waves and such. I myself don't trade too much on these, I mainly, as stated before, look for support and resistance first, then patterns, then things like candles, then indicators... it helps if I know some fundamentals. I also have only been trading pennies since I made that first mistake trade with BEHL, so I'm learning.
While it does look a little grim - I noticed a few things... maybe I'll post a chart... hang on...
tick tick...
presto:
Oh yeah, the aug candle is under the "c".
First off, this is an alternative EW count, but it doesn't effect the present action.. usually, you use elliot waves for speed of moves, not particularly for targets, etc. and I have less faith in them on the pennies, than I do indices, but they appear to work for some of our stocks... so I'll keep trying to add them in... but back to what I was looking at:
I marked a few lines.
First off on the volume. I took a closer look after reading Bass's post. Sometimes, after getting into a position, my attention starts to decrease, unless someone asks something about it. I don't go into pennies with big money, and won't up my stakes until I've played them for some time... so that's another reason. Man, I'm tired, I'm just rambling. Too the point - I looked at the volume. Since we hit the Big 2, and made the new "1" rally... the volume has jacked up tremendously... see the blue lines on the volume. That tells me we have a lot more money riding after that second trading day of august, or a hell of a lot more investors.
That said, I marked some support and resistance lines on that day (but around the open and close, since they are a little more significant), as well as the next big volume day. These days represent the most shares traded, so most decisions will be made around the ends of these two candles.
You can see the prices since have bounced to the fraction of the penny between them.
So, as of this weekend, we are in the most neutral zone... which does make me a little uncomfortable, but I do like the fact that the price has previously bounced off of the solid redline - meaning, it has stayed above the prices of the new entrants/money into the game, so if we do get a run, I think it should at least match the previous.
Now as far as I'm concerned, the folks that like to buy low, I wouldn't buy any lower than that dashed redline... that's the losing point for the new money, then unless you have some decent speculative info, you will be among the guys averaging down and hoping the price will come up, and they will likely already be heavily vested, so it'll be harder to move the price (my humble opinion). Me, I'm not buying any more, since I prefer to average up, and that won't be until it's above the dashed green line and appears to have some volume associated with it. In fact, I'll likely stop myself out, if awake, if it crosses the solid red line again, or closes below it.
Disclaimer and such - I"ve been reading one of Schwager's books, it's interviews from master traders... each one has their own style.. a common recurring theme is money management, but not always, a second and the most predominant theme is they learned their own style well, and didn't listen to others when it came to when/where to buy and sell, they learned it on their own, made their own trading plans, and stuck with them with absolute discipline until they tested enough to figure out a winnable method. In later down years, they reevaluated, and refined, or came up with new methods. I mention this, because if you are a speculative trader, you shouldn't get spooked by TA guys, and vice versa. Learn your style - are you an investor or a trader, short term or long term, .etc? Learn one first.
This thread is excellent, in that we have traders/investors of all types, so you can learn a bunch, and its not about who should be trading how, and arguing about which way to do it, and rubbing it in each other's face when one of us gets it wrong. That's what I like about it anyway.
Oh yes, yes for the pennies, PR's make the price move, but you get extra oomph from TA players that don't even follow the stock too... ie. there are guys who just look for unusual price/volume action on a universe of stocks, so they'll come in, maybe see what the PR was about, and play for one run. So there is energy from folks that don't read the PR's. I personally do not follow SIRI news, the siribuzz thread, etc. I do have a friend that fills me in on the news, but I really don't use if for trading decisions. But when I buy, it makes the price go up, and when I sell, it makes the price go down. I just look at the charts, and listen to the SIRI radio in my truck, and look around to see if people are subscribing to it. Ahh - the one thing I do do, is look for the earnings dates, and also see if the company is making money... most of the time (sometimes I don't). So in trading it's a mixed bag... one of the great traders I read about, said, at the end of the day, stock prices are 100% perception.