The stock market has been off to a slow start in 2025 so I have been using this time to review my trades from 2024.
My SRRK trade that I opened on Nov. 22nd stands out to me because it was my largest percentage earner in the shortest amount of time.
What initially caught my attention on the chart was the one day run-up of 362%, followed by a six week base that corrected about 30% off the highs. That’s not a very large correction for a stock that just ran up 362%, so this ticker was flashing some serious strength.
I have very little to report this week, except for losing potential gains in NVDA because I was greedy.
But there is good news…
After the market hit its’ third lower low, it rallied and had two legitimate accumulation days during the rally. The correction isn’t over, but the odds are good that this week marks the beginning of the end.
Rough week for the stock market and for a lot of individual tickers, but my portfolio is holding up well. It helps I’m selectively placing low risk bets on strong stock and that I’m mostly in cash.
In the short term the market is not in good shape. Just yesterday the NASDAQ set a third lower low, and all of the major indexes, $SPY $QQQ $IWM, have a similar look. Midcaps are holding up the best $MDY, but that isn’t pretty either. Until the general market shows some real signs of strength I’m going to remain very defensive.
I scrolled back as far as $IXIC would supply me data and I was unable to find a day that had this much volume at all.
I realize that this is just one single data point in a sea of data points, but this is a very strong one. This is not trading advice, but it is a word of caution for myself and to anyone reading this for the near term. Looks like the correction we are currently experiencing has suddenly increased the odds of IXIC and QQQ taking out the previous low soon.
High tight flags aren’t something I have traded much, but they’re very powerful, so I’m looking to learn by doing, with small position size of course.
If you’re on my email list or follow me on X you know QURE was one of the two stocks at the top of my watch list this week.
Unfortunately I fumbled the entry here a bit but I’ll expand on that in a minute. First let’s cover why I thought this was a good buy and how I planned to trade it.
If you’ve been keeping up with me on X or subscribe to my emails, you knew that going into this week I had two stocks at the top of my list. One of them was AZPN.
I was watching the open, hoping to see it open near Friday’s close and slowly work its’ way above the 252.18 pivot.
As you can see from the chart below it did not do that. It gapped up on me two cents above my buy price. I didn’t jump on it though. I wanted to wait and see if it would pull back and then push back out above my target.
The market is still in a correction so I am being very careful about adding new positions. I’m keeping myself busy by being on the lookout for stocks that are acting well, and to a lesser degree managing risk on open positions. I did hit my stop on YMM, cut DOCS loose at break even, and I added to my NVDA position on Friday.
With my new trading rule set in place I got busy pretty quick Monday morning.
My list of new potential positions was pretty short. Here’s the whole list: AAL, COCO, EMBC, TPR, VSCO, and MRCY.
A pretty short and sad little list, a bit telling on current overall market conditions.
From that list EMBC was the clear front runner, mostly because on Wednesday Dec 18th, when most of the market was selling off, EMBC found a way to close higher and with higher volume than the day before. Relative strength is very important to me.
I wanted to share with you why I took up a position in YMM on Friday. We’ve got two buy points here. The first is on November 26th, I missed this one but it’s a really good one coming off of a moderately strong earnings reaction.
Here’s my biggest problem, I take too many trades. I lose money because I’m too eager to pull the trigger, especially when I’ve got some profit to lean on.
It’s like I’m at the range with an unlimited supply of bullets, just blasting away, hoping I hit something.
My grandfather was one of the best markmen in the US Army during WWII. After the war he won multiple US Army marksman competitions for his skills with a rifle. Later he trained thousands of recruits that were headed off to the war in Korea in how to be accurate shots with their rifles.
I’m trying to get better at getting into high octane names, and in my exhubernace I pulled the trigger on IONQ early this morning without a proper pivot. It didn’t even have a one day pause pivot.
Since earnings on Nov 6th it made a move of 167% and I wanted to be involved in any moves higher. Instead of being patient and waiting for a pullback and reversal, or at least a pause pivot, I opened a quarter position as it took out yesterday’s high and set my stop to the low of the day for 6% risk.
In a nutshell, I bought NVDA today because it was a low risk, high reward trade.
I bought NVDA today at $130.68 as one of two things are likely to happen very soon. It’s either going to move back up quickly above today’s high, or move down quickly below today’s low.
It could chop around for a few days before making up its’ mind, but now that it has completed a head and shoulders trading pattern by breaking below the neckline, I expect it to make a strong move one way or the other, and to do it quickly.
I like the base $NMRK has formed here, and after showing solid support at the 50 day, I used the high of the day on 12/4 as my pivot buy point. On 12/5 it opened at the previous days close and then methodically moved above my buy in price around noon. What I really like about buying at this price was that it coincided with a move above the 20 day. A close above it would be a confirming strength signal.