Phileo's Picture Windows

Swing Trading blog

noreply@blogger.com (Phileo) — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 14:20:00 +0000

Another adventure of sorts Read Full Post..... I've started a blog to capture my thoughts and strategies in swing trading. You can check it out here. Going forward, this blog will be used primarily for trading futures, and market analysis trading ideas of various futures markets.

Outlook for Turnaround Tuesday, Sep 20/11

noreply@blogger.com (Phileo) — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 03:26:00 +0000

Capture some of my thoughts on S&P500 eMini futures for tomorrow's session Read Full Post..... Quantifiable Edges says that the week following OpEx in Sep is the weakest week of the year. I am also indirectly inferring from the Gap Guy that based on current patterns, tomorrow's session will have a downward bias, at least initially. FOMC rate announcement is not until Wednesday, so that leaves Tuesday as the perfect days for bears to be the aggressor. The current Asian session indicates that the day session battle between bears and bulls in the 1182-1195 range is still unresolved. I think that the range for ES for tomorrow (Tuesday's) day session will be 1195 - 1175 Bias is down.

Samsung Galaxy Tab vs. Apple iPad (NASDAQ: AAPL) : Shootout at the OK Corral!

noreply@blogger.com (Phileo) — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 05:18:00 +0000

Although the iPad has a 2 year first mover advantage, Steve Jobs should not be so non-chalantly critical of the competition, which is catching up fast. Very Fast.
Read Full Post.....

My company bought a Samsung Galaxy Tab for a project at work, and I was able to borrow it to use exclusively for the rest of this year.

"7-inch tablets are ... useless"
- Steve Jobs, Oct 18, 2010

"Competitors will likely offer less for more."
- Steve Jobs, Oct 18, 2010

At my local Bell Mobility dealer, the 7" Samsung Tab costs $649 + $35/mo for 5Gb data plan on an HSPA network. The Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) 9.7" iPad w/ 3G data plan costs $679 + cost of data plan. So assuming an equivalent data plan, then for an extra $30, you get almost 40% more screen real estate. Ok, fair enough, pricing goes to Apple on this one.

"7-inch tablets are too big to compete with a smartphone and too small to compete with an iPad."

It was a dark and stormy night. My friend was holding a party. He had recently bought an Apple iPad. I was debating whether or not to bring my Galaxy Tab with me to the party. Heck, why not ?

I arrived at the party fashionably late. There were some people I had not seen for a while, so I engaged in the usual social chatter to get a "download" of their happenings while we ate takeout food. After dinner, the social chatter inevitably turned to tech, and then of course to tech toys. These people were talking about the new tablets, and naturally, I informed them that I had the Samsung Galaxy Tab. Naturally they wanted to see, and so naturally, I took mine out to show them. At this point my friend overheard our conversation. And so naturally, he said he had an iPad, and so naturally, we asked him to show it.

We sat down at opposite sides of the coffee table. I felt like Nolan Ryan staring down Mark McGuire. He showed off Multi-touch pinch zoom of maps on the iPad. Not a problem on the G-Tab. He showed off swiping to the next page of apps. "Check" on the G-Tab. He showed off an accelerometer game called Labyrinth. "yup" on the G-Tab. He clicked on a YouTube icon to show how he could view videos. Well, G-Tab can do that in the browser ! NY Times on the iPad? Ditto on the G-Tab, although I do admit the bigger screen real estate does make it easier to read more on the page.

At this point the conversation turned to other tech themes. Which suited me fine, since I was not really that familiar with using the G-Tab, as I had only just got my hands on it a couple days earlier. I had downloaded only a couple apps from the Android market. But later that night, I decided to explore the G-Tab, or Google's (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android OS really, a bit further.

"Having done extensive user testing on touch interfaces, we really understand this stuff. "

Here are some things that G-Tab can do, which I'm not sure iPad can do:
- video chat on Skype.
- scan business cards with the camera, convert to text and store into contacts list with 1 touch
- order Indian takeout food in Hindi
- 720x480 video recording
- 720x480 video recording while listening to grooveshark.com and downloading an app from the Android Market.

So, while the G-Tab comes with its own set of warts (eg. I can't connect over WiFi when using WEP encryption), it certainly is no slouch and can more than handle itself very well in a head to head battle with the iPad. I am actually looking forward to bringing the G-Tab to the next iPad party. So it really comes down to what kind of a user are you. Again, like I said, which is the lesser evil: being forced to follow a cult, or having the sanctity of your privacy be pillaged and exploited ?

Top 5 reasons to use Google Chrome

noreply@blogger.com (Phileo) — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 18:05:00 +0000

The Chrome browser has come a long way in just under 2 years.

Not too long after Chrome came out, I posted a rant on why it sucked. Well, it's 1 year and 10 months later, and I think I need to re-visit that rant.

What has changed my mind? Well, Chrome has evolved, it's changed for the better, and it has addressed all the issues that I ranted about prior. Plus it is not going to go quietly into the night, so I thought I would switch over to using it. I am now using Chrome for all of my surfing needs, and only occasionally resort to FF3.6 or IE8 if there is a problem that I cannot solve in Chrome. Let's take a look at what I ranted about before, and see what has changed ......

1. Chrome UI has been polished up:
Just like when the Acura Integra first came out with its odd double circle headlights, all things GUI related require time to adjust. They've resolved their scrolling issues, and now have extensions to provide dropdown URL history, and switching to another search engine. Also they've provided a download progress bar too.

2. Flash support:
As I later found out, the Yahoo!Finance site does not properly work on Chrome because Yahoo refuses to recognize Chrome's user agent. So, installing an extension that spoofs any browser's UA string resolved this issue.

3. Browser extensions:
This is a potential game changer, as any feature set available on FireFox should also be doable in Chrome, just need someone to write the extension for it if it does not yet exist.

4. Resource allocation:
Before, I complained that Chrome would hog more memory to implement its novel multi-process browser model. However, now I am beginning to see the reason and purpose behind its need for more memory than FireFox. Simply put, FireFox aspires to be a good browser, but Google Chrome has bigger aspirations.

5. NO longer worse than Firefox:
FireFox is still the yardstick by which all browsers should be judged, but in the past 2 years, Chrome has made visible and tangible progress towards becoming pound for pound comparable to FireFox's feature set.

To sum up , Google has come a long way in the past two years, and if this is any indication, it has big aspirations, especially with its plans for the Chrome app web store. Just more reasons to consider using it now, as I can see the potential for it to dominate like how IE dominated netscape in winning the browser wars in the 90's.

Read Full Post.....

Results for Wednesday, July 14, 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Phileo) — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 20:49:00 +0000

Overtraded, -2.5pts
Read Full Post.....

My system keeps giving out good signals, but I was not focused today, and was too late for the first 2 signals. My lack of focus also led me to miss out on the gap fill setup (long 1086.5 at 635am PST). Frustrated, I decided to take some trades outside of my system's signals, and lost.

I took my system's 4th (and 2nd to last) signal, and made back some of my losses.
Small consolation.

Results for Friday Jul 9

noreply@blogger.com (Phileo) — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 20:59:00 +0000

3W, +2.5pts.
Read Full Post.....

My system gave 4 signals, and I found 2 discretionary setups.
Trade1(discretionary):
L1064.5, stop1062.5, T1=1066.5
I exited 1065.5

Trade2:
S1070.25, stop1072.25, T1=1068.25
Did not take this trade, although the correct entry was to wait for the spike right into 1071 reistance, and short there.

Trade3(discretionary):
S1068, stop1070, T1=1066
This one was a setup for a reversal of the pullback and trying to catch more downside.
As it turns out, there was no more downside, especially since right after I entered short, I got a long signal from my system, so it the correct decision to exit 1067.25

Trade4:
L1067.5, stop1065.5, T1=1069.5
passed on this trade, as it was hard to adjust to the long bias right after I had exited my short.
It actually never quite made it to its target, so probably would have gotten 1.5pts if I had actually taken it.

Trade5:
L1069.5, stop1067.5, t1=1073
This was a valid signal from my system, so I faithfully executed this according to plan. I was 1pt into the money when some ambush selling came out of nowhere, which scared me out breakeven. Had I had the courage to hold on (the pullback did not break the bullish structure of higher lows), I would have reached my target.

Trade6:
S1073.25, stop1075.25, t1=1071.25
I took this trade, as it was a fade of the tick extreme after 3pushes up. Exited too soon at 1072.5.

I traded like a timid small player today, but the most important thing was that I did not make any mistakes in execution. Trade management as always, could use more improvement. But the incremental improvement is encouraging.

Monday will be important, as I need to keep the momentum going of avoiding any mistakes, and staying out of trouble.

Organizing my system

noreply@blogger.com (Phileo) — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 04:24:00 +0000

Just a note on how I will be organizing my system.
Read Full Post.....

I think the best way to organize my system is to post my signals onto Twitter, and the daily update and discussion/analysis of results onto this blog.

I have created a new account, @pTradeSystem to facilitate posting of my signals.
I can't guarantee that I will post every signal, but the ones I do post will be as close to real time as possible.

Results for Thursday, July 8, 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Phileo) — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 21:28:00 +0000

1W 1L, +1.25pts
Read Full Post.....

My system generated 5 signals today (1 was discretionary, outside of the system), but I only took 2 trades:

Trade1:
S1064.5 stop1066.4 T1=1062.5

I passed on this trade, as it was right near the open

Trade2:
S1067 stop1069 T1=1065
I front ran my signal, and entered short too soon at 1066, and got stopped out 1067.5

lost -1.5pts

Trade3:
S1063.25 stop1065.25, T1=1061
I executed and managed this trade much better, exited 1060.5
+2.75 pts.

At this point, I stopped taking any more signals from my system and was done for the day as I had other things to attend to.

Trade4:
L1057.75 stop1055.75, T1=1059.75

Trade5:
L1055.75, stop 1053.75, T1=1057.75

Trade6:
L1055.5, stop 1053.5, T1=1058

Still need to work on following my system better, and not try to out guess or front run the signals. But overall, an improvement over yesterday, as I was patient enough not to take any boredom trades while I waited for a signal from my system.

Key is to be patient, as it always was the key, and always will be the key.

results for July 7, 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Phileo) — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 20:10:00 +0000

2W, 2L, -2.5pts

Read Full Post.....

Trade1: L1028, stop1027, T1=1031
exited (too soon) at 1028.75

Trade2: S1035, stop 1037, T1=1033
passed, did not take trade

Trade3: S1039.5, stop1041.5, T1=1037.5
stopped out
This trade would have worked and target was realistic (above the 1036 support), but I needed a bigger stop because it was counter trend.

Trade4: L1038.75, stop 1036.75, T1=1041.75
did not take trade

Trade5(discretionary): L1040, stop 1038, T1=1042
exited 1041

Trade6: S1044.75, stop 1046.75, T1=1043.5
did not take trade

Trade7: S1050, stop 1052, T1=1049
did not take trade

disappointing today.
After getting stopped out, I stopped following my system. Eventually, I tried to fade the trend day, and wound up losing 2pts overall on the day.

Today's lesson is simple:
Follow the system!

Had I followed the system, I would not have lost 2pts.

exit signal1

noreply@blogger.com (Phileo) — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 13:54:00 +0000

652am exited L1028 @1028.75
setup was reversal of pullback targetting new highs.
It was not a signal from my system.

+0.75 pts.

signal 1

noreply@blogger.com (Phileo) — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 13:51:00 +0000

649am: long 1028

daily summary: Mon. Jul 6, 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Phileo) — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 20:32:00 +0000

5W, 1L, +4 pts on the day.

Read Full Post.....

My new system gave me 8 signals (but I only traded 5 of them), I found 1 setup on my own, for a total of 6 trades as follows:

Trade 1:
L1029, Stop 1027, T1=1031
actually exited 1030, +1pt

Trade 2:
S1033, Stop 1035, initial T1=1031
exited 1032, +1pt
This was right on the money, but I screwed up the trade management and exited too soon (was impatient).

Trade 3:
S1036.5, Stop 1038.5, T1034.5
scratched.
I was trying to front run my short signal here, and paid for it dearly with a scratch trade. It was counter-trend again, so definitely needed to wait for the confirmation.
The signal was to short 1038, which turns out this was the HoD.

Trade 4:
L1033.5, Stop 1031.5, T1= 1035.5
stopped out 1032
lost -1.5pts
This was my own discretionary setup. Again, I entered too soon and should have been more patient in waiting first for confirmation of the reversal.

Trade 5:
L1025.5, Stop 1023.5, T1=1027.5
+1.0pt, +1.25 pts on 2nd contract
Much better waiting for the confirmation, a bit better on the trade mgmt.

Trade 6:
L1019.25, Stop 1017.25, T1=1021.25
+1.75pts, +0.25pts on 2nd contract
Good execution, good trade mgmt.

At that point, i was done for the day. My system gave me 3 more signals (L1019, S1020, L1015), but i did not take them.

So, the signals are golden. It was mainly lack of patience (entering too soon), and poor trade mgmt skills (exiting too soon) which prevented me from banking major coin today.
This is encouraging for me, I know what i need to do to improve, will try again tomorrow.

signal 6 final update

noreply@blogger.com (Phileo) — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 18:08:00 +0000

1106am: out remaining contract 1019.5
+0.25pts

signal 6 update

noreply@blogger.com (Phileo) — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 18:03:00 +0000

1101am: out 1 @1021, moving stop to 1018.25 for remaining contract

+1.75pts

signal 6

noreply@blogger.com (Phileo) — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 17:58:00 +0000

1057am: long 1019.25

signal 5 final update

noreply@blogger.com (Phileo) — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 17:12:00 +0000

1008am : exited remaining long @1026.75
+1.25pts.

trade management better this time, and timing also a little better this time, although I still entered a little too early (1025 was ideal long entry).

signal 5 update

noreply@blogger.com (Phileo) — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 17:03:00 +0000

1002am: exited 1 @1026.5, moving stop up to b/e for remaining 1 contract

locked in +1pt thus far.

signal 5

noreply@blogger.com (Phileo) — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 16:55:00 +0000

955am long 1025.5

exit signal 4

noreply@blogger.com (Phileo) — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 15:27:00 +0000

826a out 1032
loss 1.5pts.

signal 4

noreply@blogger.com (Phileo) — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 15:18:00 +0000

817am long 1033.5

exit signal3

noreply@blogger.com (Phileo) — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 14:21:00 +0000

720am exited b/e. too close for comfort. entered too early again. will be more cautious of countertrend shorting

signal 3

noreply@blogger.com (Phileo) — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 14:10:00 +0000

709am: short 1036.5 2/2 stop/T1

exit signal2

noreply@blogger.com (Phileo) — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 13:58:00 +0000

657am covered short at 1032 ahead of 7am reversal time, too much strength and entered too early (didn't wait for the +ve TICK extreme first)

+1pt

signal 2

noreply@blogger.com (Phileo) — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 13:53:00 +0000

653am short 1033, 2/2 stop/T1

exit signal1

noreply@blogger.com (Phileo) — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 13:44:00 +0000

644am: exit 1030

+1.0 pts.