Stock Du Jour, Thu. May 7, 2020, IO

Added on by C. Maoxian.

ION Geophysical (IO) was the stock du jour, doing 191,000 trades and $147MM in volume. It was hard-to-borrow and I paid the brookie 1.92 cents per share ($192 per 10,000) for the borrow. It gave me a good spot and faded all day (with one cynical stop run attempted at 11:45ish, study the Bookmap closely there). I was a very good boy and took NO partial profits (Dave Mabe’s constant badgering having a good effect),

TTPH was also in play, also hard-to-borrow ($322 per 10,000) … got a good spot but this one DID succeed in jamming me out on a cynical stop run (a redundancy), but I was wise to their ways and quickly re-shorted. I could have made quite a bit more if I had covered after hours, but it’s Thursday and I’m already pretty exhausted from sitting in front of screens all day (I’m an old man), so I said the heck with it.

Now all was not caramel popcorn and mint juleps, I also opened up IB and… you guessed it, shorted two ETB stocks that were in-play: WTRH and FSLY. As is nearly always the case, I was tricked, trapped and stopped out pretty fast in both of them. It was fine, planned loss and all that. But then… yep, right at the close, I swear ten minutes from the close, I hammered into both of them to get revenge, you know, get back those earlier losses, and I think you know what happened. Yes, more losses. Unnecessary losses. So I’m annoyed with myself.

Nevertheless the sick coin banked in the HTBs offset the stupid ETB shorts at IB, which means I wasted another day of my life (plus paying a lot of borrow fees). You have to be constantly vigilant, can’t slip up, can’t go on tilt, can’t get revenge. Gotta just let it go. Until tomorrow!

Stock Du Jour, Wed. May 6, 2020, XRF

Added on by C. Maoxian.

China Rapid Finance (XRF) was the stock du jour (more specifically the HTB du jour), doing 157,000 trades and $86MM in volume … it was hard-to-borrow and I paid 2.71 cents per share to borrow it ($271 per 10,000 shares). It gave me a good spot and faded all day. I was a good boy and took no partial profits and ended up making 25% on the full position. I also traded POAI (3.29 cent borrow) and MDGS (a 9.19 cent borrow and a meaningless partial fill) with the brookie. POAI was a very good trade, but MDGS I messed up, the partial fill on borrow threw me, then I missed entry, had to chase (but didn’t really have to), then hated everything about it and scratched it later in the day.

Two ETBs were in-play today: MGNX (318,000 trades and $2BB in volume) and LPSN (45,400 trades and $345MM in volume). I noticed them late so I don’t have a full Bookmap tape to replay, otherwise I’d make MGNX the stock du jour. I swore to myself that I wouldn’t play any ETBs at IB from the short side, but these two were real parabolics and I couldn’t resist trading MacroGenics. Of course I got tricked, trapped, and top-ticked out, but of course I expected that to happen … ETB after all.

It was a good day all things considered, I was a good boy, patiently waiting for my spots, sizing right, riding the winners hard, no partial profits, banking sick coin, brah (though never stress-free) … no tilt, no revenge trading, no TWTR … only thing I’m upset about is playing an ETB at the end of the day there, but that should serve as a reminder not to do so in coming days and weeks (or minutes, if tilted). You’re always one trade away from total destruction in this biz, and don’t let anyone tell you differently.

Stock Du Jour, Tue. May 5, 2020, MVIS

Added on by C. Maoxian.

Microvision (MVIS) was the stock du jour, or more specifically, the HTB (hard-to-borrow) du jour, doing 373,000 trades and $409MM in volume. It coiled beautifully all morning clearly defining half number $1.50 as the key level of “support” (esp. visible using Bookmap) … the borrow was 1.77 cents per share ($177 per 10,000) and I got a good entry. My old trading buddy Dave Mabe has been counseling about letting my winners run and I was a good boy and didn’t take a single partial profit as it collapsed 35%. Note that SSR was triggered by a penny, those clever devils! Yep, banked some sick coin, brah, though it was not, and never will be, “stress-free.”

I also traded SGBX (38,800 trades) and CLSK (242,000 trades) with the brookie, paying 19.91 (!) cents and 2.25 cents per share, respectively, for the borrow. GNPX was also in-play and I was super keen on it (it gave a lovely spot) but the brookie had no borrow (it’s a Reg SHO Threshold List stock) and I even went to a SECOND brookie for a borrow (alas, they had none either).

Now all was not sweetness and fairy dust… I traded three easy-to-borrow (ETB) stocks with IB and lost in all three of them, three swings, three misses, yep, I’m sensing a trend with these easy-to-borrow stocks, hrmm, what could it be?? Yeah, I really need to avoid shorting ETB stocks, they are major “headaches,” as the kids like to say.

Big day, good day, no tape fighting, no stop pulling, no (GOD FORBID) adding to a loser, no tilt! Just solid execution start to finish in HTB land, what a wonderful niche. There’s a reason this is the playground of superstars like Grittani and Du Xiuxian and who else, I don’t know, there must be one or two others, hell, everyone on TWTR seems to “nail” things day after day (until they suddenly disappear forever). But, seriously, you have to be a semi-pro gambler here, no training wheels allowed.

(Remember, slow down the video… pause it, rewind it, speed it up, pause, slow it, stop, study, back it up, re-watch. You get the picture?)

A Method to His Madazness

Added on by C. Maoxian.

I have a whole post devoted to madaz’s large losses … he took another one recently, so I’ve posted the CAPR chart below instead of lengthening the old post:

Click to enlarge

I think what happens is he takes an initial loss, say it’s $5,000. Then he doubles his share size in an attempt to “get it back” and loses $10,000 more. So he doubles his size again and loses $20,000 more. He does take these losses, he’s not adding to a loser, he’s just doubling his size on the next attempt, I believe. He might level it off at some point and be risking, say, a flat $25,000 or something on each attempt. He doesn’t say how big his total maximum loss was, but let’s guess it was $75,000 and then he made around $30,000 back to end up with a ~$45,000 loss on the short side.

If he’s generating 123 tickets and over 900,000 shares traded, then you know he’s trying to dig himself out of a hole to end the day “green,” “banking stress-free coin.” Is this a style of trading you want to emulate? I’m not dissing him, he has a method that works for him, god bless him, but you don’t want to be naive about what he’s doing or think that you could, in a million years, imitate his style.

Book Flip Example I

Added on by C. Maoxian.

Nice example from this morning’s pre-open trading in SGBX … I was not present to take advantage, but I know what to do when I see it!

Click to enlarge

Stock Du Jour, Mon. May 4, 2020, APDN

Added on by C. Maoxian.

Applied DNA Sciences (APDN) was the stock du jour, doing 122,000 trades and $295MM in volume … it was hard-to-borrow and I paid my brookie (newly coined) between 10.72 and 18.4 cents per share (weighted average 16.73 cents per share of $1,673 per 10,000). Let’s briefly think about a small account attempting to short hard-to-borrows … say they borrowed 1,000 shares for $168, think about how perfect their timing would have to be to justify that kind of expense? This stock was at $13.07 pre-open, up from a $6.63 previous close, so plenty of range here to justify the cost, but that’s not always the case.

Bros who have no method and just randomly get in, more or less, are fine when things fade all day, and they can pay their borrow fees then, but what about the losing days? Fees will destroy the little guy who is trading randomly (no consistent approach).

MVIS came on my radar late because it was a sub-dollar, but it did 205,000 trades and $302MM in volume. IB had no shares anyway. Other actives were CODX (no shares available at my brookie), RVP with 54,900 trades … I was short RVP (it tricked me in), and it ran hard in the afternoon … if I were risking to Grittani’s $5,000 high of day, I would have lost that much, but I don’t risk to high of day. VSTM was active … AGRX, FLDM I traded at IB since they had shares.

Good day, big win on APDN with a lot of shares and I was pleased with my trade management in it. But tomorrow is another day and you’re always one trade away from going on tilt, losing everything, and disappearing from TWTR forever and ever.

Comments on Grittani Trade Recap: Short IFON

Added on by C. Maoxian.

Tim Grittani has started doing recaps of selected trades on YouTube, which are interesting to review. Here's an annotated chart with my comments for his short trade in IFON, initiated on July 26, 2017. IFON has done two reverse splits since then so the scale has been multiplied 25 times.

Position size: ~$35,000

Click to enlarge

Comments on Grittani Trade Recap: Short AEZS (win)

Added on by C. Maoxian.

Tim Grittani has started doing recaps of selected trades on YouTube, which are interesting to review. Here's an annotated chart with my comments for his short trade in $AEZS, initiated on July 21, 2017. He swung this one for two days, risked $7500 to high of previous day, made 74 cents or 5R on this swing trade. Multiple R trades are more likely on swings than day trades.

Click to enlarge