Work in Progress

Only had 3 days so far of a 4 day work week, but still feels long! Alas, tomorrow is Friday!

This does mean you need to get Friday Night Entertainment blog requests in on the comments or over Twitter.

Market Operations
I sold out of AREX today from my buy on 1/31/2012 (Great work up on this one by ChessNwine, thanks!). Gain was +6.4%. There is nothing really wrong with the chart or the name, now that I am out it may well run higher big time. I have held the stock for 3 weeks and was ready to move on. Also, have been working on some screens that I want to direct more capital towards. Here is a look and I had a target on this around $41:

Good stuff.

Work in Progress
As the markets change, one has to adapt as well. When I re-entered the trading scene and mindset at the start of 2011 I was focused on bounce plays and oversold rebounds as the market had been very aggressive finding things of that sort to put money in. It worked well, for a while. After the Japan earthquake disaster things got much more difficult and the market sped up the tempo finding moving stocks then walking away. Rotation on an almost daily rate. Difficult to trade from a longer time frame (days- to 2 weeks is my trading window). Then the summer came and while shorting did not work in my trading account, things were very dicey.

By the end of the summer a new trend emerged and that was strictly watching overbought/oversold conditions as markets moved as one to each apex and bottom almost weekly. Some longer runs up and down formed, but by the time you could trust them, things changed.

2012 has been a much better environment. The start of 2012 has been a great time for many, and I am included. Patterns are going to end points, accumulation means something, the nerves have been assuaged.

And so things change again.

I have been noticing that many of my screens have been seeing stocks with excellent returns. Problem is my homework nights over the weekends are not finding the stocks moving in the week ahead, but a week after that or more. But they are finding great results and leads. I have a few screens built inside the iBC PPT that are working, but my timing has been off.

I see this as a good thing.

Instead of recklessly plowing into anything moving, larger money is back to scoping out a position, layering in, and holding on. This takes time and commitment. It is a huge positive for the market going forward.

As such, I want to try and work on these screens and ideas and allow them more of my focus. I have been testing plenty of the screens and I would be doing well had I allowed a touch more time for setups to both fully form AND stay on my radar. Maybe I am used to the hyper active turnarounds from times past, but I am dropping things from my main gun sights and that lag seems to be what's needed.

Of course, things could change. They always do.

Have a good night.