Registered User
Joined: 1/20/2007
Posts: 8
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Hi all,
I am new to charts, could anyone please tell me what you think of PTT? I own some at avg cost 9.60 and am not sure what to do ?
buy/hold/sell ? whats the support and resistance ?
Please pitch in with comments :)
Best regards
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Registered User
Joined: 10/7/2004
Posts: 2,181
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When did you buy this and why?
Did you ever have a stop loss for it?
If so, why did you cancel or how did it get violated?
If you never set a stop loss, why not?
Let's talk a little about it.
For now, I would be out of this stock until it shows me its intentions. I don't like the current looks of it.
Always remember this, the cost of saving your capital is just the price of a commission. If a stock goes down and, of course, you're hoping it will go back up, you can protect your capital by selling the stock. They'll be glad to let you buy it back when it starts to climb again. But if you hold the stock (again, hoping it will go back up taking your portfolio value with it), you can continue to lose value in your portfolio. I'd get out now and put it in a watchlist.
And you might want to paper trade (as many of us did) until you're working a proven system or model for your trading.
Best of luck...let's discuss where you're going with this and your trading in general.
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 Gold Customer
Joined: 11/11/2006
Posts: 359
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Khullarnidhi: Since you asked, here's my outlook on this thing. Volume has been low but is now picking up as the stock price falls. This is almost always a bad thing. BOP has been green, indicating buying pressure and this has been about the only bright spot for tis equity. DMI has turned negative, MACD-H is negative,and getting worse. PTT has broken its 50 day moving average. This is widely seen as a point of support/resistance. If you use the trendline drawing tool across the highs in January, you will note that the price broke above this in Feb., ran along the top of it and bounced on top, came down to this line in early March, bounced off with a bullish engulfing type of candlestick and is now approaching this level of support again. It now rests at the lower Bollinger Band(20/20. There is a chance it will again bounce off the roughly $8.00 support. Resistance is somewhere around the 10.50 area, the top of the last high formation. Depending on your risk tolerance, you could hold and see. The old maxim says to never buy just below resistance, or sell just above support. That being said, you would have an drop of another 7% for this to be a factor. You are now down about 10%. In general terms, traders (NOT Investors)will almost never take over a 10% loss. Truth be told, I would have been long gone before now. For 7%, I,my own self, would sell now and buy it back when, and if, it rebounds from support.
I hope this helps and I haven't lead you astray in my thinking.
Good trading
Mammon
Mammon
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Registered User
Joined: 1/20/2007
Posts: 8
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hi tobydad,
thanks for replying.
I bought this from the IBD200 list. As I said, I am not much of a chart reader so go instead for other indicators. I have been trading this list for the last few months with decent rates. This is the first time I am 'stuck' in an IBD stock.
I normally have a mental stop, but could not access my trading screen, was away for a couple of days. and am back to see PTTdown. It had earnings release yesterday and there was no accompanying volume. Has had 6 consecutive down days now and I am tempted to get out to save capital.
However, this stock moves wildly at times and I dont want to loose $+ on abt 1800 shares only to see it climb back to my buy price by the end of the day :)
Whats your take on the chart? You see any resistance or near term support?
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Registered User
Joined: 1/20/2007
Posts: 8
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Thanks mammon, appreciate your comments and insight.
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Registered User
Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 902
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not yanking yer chain - but where do YOU think the support and resistance lines are? I couldn't imagine trading stocks without knowing how to read charts - even if you're getting the stock names from elsewhere, the charts tell you entry and exit points.
Are you familiar with any indicators such as schocastics and moving averages?
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Registered User
Joined: 9/21/2005
Posts: 566
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This was some good feedback to khullarnidhi on his question. You guys do a good job with your technical analysis. I wanted to take a quick look at the chart in question and typed in the wrong ticker (PPD), which as it happens has an interesting chart. khullarnidhi, I won't give any feedback on your stock because can't offer anything of value beyond what's been provided, but would encourage you to read these boards as much as possible. You can learn a lot from the people here.
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Registered User
Joined: 10/26/2005
Posts: 238
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khullarnidhi "I normally have a mental stop, but could not access my trading screen, was away for a couple of days. and am back to see PTTdown." I would like add anytime I cannot watch my trades I ALWAYS have a "sell stop" in place to protect my capitol. AB
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Registered User
Joined: 4/18/2005
Posts: 4,090
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I had a roomate in 99' who was going to quit his job and trade for a living. He used "mental stops" He made a TON of money that year. He is still working. I am at home trading (or fishing depending on market days). Capital preservation is your first goal. it will happen sometimes that you get suckered and hand of the stock to someone for a great price. It's happened to all of us. Keep the losses small. Let the proffits run.
enter your stops when you submit your orders If you are going to travel IMO.
Know when you want to get out in either scenario.. if it goes up or down. And stick to your plan......Unless somethign serious merrits a change (negative earnings report, terror attack, seriously bad news in connection tot he company)
I would suggest watching as many of the "strategy notes and videos" as you can. I like the videos. I have read a few books on technical analysis and taken courses for pretty good $. To Be honest Dons two short books on chart reading do a decent job of suming up what other books take volumes to sum up in ancient market characteristics. Entries and Exits is good by Alexander Elder. I would suggest skiming "Technical analysis of Stock trends" by Edwards and McGee, particularily chapters on tops bottoms flags pennants. There are websites for candlestick chart interpretations if you like candlesticks.
WATCH ALL THE TUTORIAL VIDEOS ON THIS SITE and the disks that came with your software. Some of dons training disks are probably prety good also.
Make your own plan and don't look to others to tell you what to do. they may have different risk or trading parameters than you do.
Now, See how this stock went from $2.00 to $12.00 in less than 6 months? many would consider that an extroridnary gain and wait for a lower risk entry, or pull back. Notice how price, tsv, moneystream,RSI, volume and macd are all rounded and headed down ..... at a faster pace than price? you can pull a horizontal line right under the low of march and call it sidewayse (weak suport). The whicks on the candles bottoms the last few days may be bulls stepping in at the end of the day... possibly trading the range or just day traders exiting at the end of the day. Also it is at the lower extreme of a price envelope so there is encouragement there, allot of trader buy the lower envelope and sell the top envelope.... Look at weekly charts, it went from $1.12 to $12.00 in no time and punched right through its resistance at $2.71. Even if I bought this with a long term hold in mind .. those gains change the plan.... for me. But i'm young and don't need dividends and splits. which this company is to young for (my guess) so that wasn't the plan anyway.
your stongest support would be the $2.17 next up from there would be $3.37 and $6.53
Hope this helps.
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Registered User
Joined: 4/18/2005
Posts: 4,090
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Tobydad has a great point. papertrading is WAY underrated by allot of gambling traders. there are several places you can papertrade. Virtual stock exchange.com, Interactivebrokers has an excellent papertrader program that I use. Mytrack is also good... or you can just log them in a notebook if nothing else...however submitting an order as close as possible to your actual order is the best thing.
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Registered User
Joined: 4/17/2006
Posts: 271
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StockTA website might be helpful to you. It indicates by purely mechanical means what the short/intermediate/long and overall trends are as well as where major supports and resistances are (they use Fibonacci calculations and list them in left hand column, the larger the cluster of numbers at a particular support or resistance level, the stronger the S or R is at that point). But even with a mechanical system like this, it only gives you probabilities and ideas, then YOU have to analyze and reach your own decision.
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Registered User
Joined: 4/17/2006
Posts: 271
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P.S. I'm still new, and can't tell you how glad I am that I'm doing 95% of my trades still on paper. Yay for paper trading where I can accidentally add an extra zero and short 100,000 rather than 10,000 shares! Or forget a decimel point and enter a buy order at $20 rather than $2! Learn what errors and market vagaries are POSSIBLE (more than you'd think!) and correct them while paper-trading. Let your stomach do flips while you're paper-trading until your emotions are more under control. Your stomach will still some when trading real money, but practice keeps improving that situation so you can trade on reasoning rather than emotions.
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Registered User
Joined: 3/21/2006
Posts: 4,308
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My point of veiw on this stock seems to be different then every one else so take what I say with a grain of salt and use caution..
I would personaly not sell at this point. This does not look like a top to me.
In early March price bounced of the support created by January's price action, and I think that it is just testing those lows again.
Short term Stochastics and CCI are at there bottom and CCI is turning up. If you want to use a stop loss then what better then to use the January support level. Put your stop just below that at $7.90 (If you bought at $9.60 then that is a 17% loss) So this is a high risk, Sell half your shares now and if price breaks below the stop then sell the rest. If price bounces off the support like it did in March then buy more shares and improve your price per share average.
It is very hard with these types of decisions when you have real money on the line, but you have to take emotions out of the equation. If you are not able to do that then you should sell all now and take Tobydads advice and papper trade until you gain more confidence..
(IMO)
Apsll...
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Registered User
Joined: 12/2/2004
Posts: 1,775
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QUOTE (sharkattak) P.S. I'm still new, and can't tell you how glad I am that I'm doing 95% of my trades still on paper. Yay for paper trading where I can accidentally add an extra zero and short 100,000 rather than 10,000 shares! Or forget a decimel point and enter a buy order at $20 rather than $2! Learn what errors and market vagaries are POSSIBLE (more than you'd think!) and correct them while paper-trading.
Shark, don't know if you saw earlier reply to your problem in another thread somewhere, so in case you didn't I'll repeat. There are several excellent programs that will integrate with your broker and greatly improve the trading platform, complete with improved trade module, intraday and historical live charting, streamer lists that offers more tickers than your broker might, etc. And specific to your concern, the ability to set your own defaults that will prevent errors such as extra zero and/or improper decimel point. In otherwords, you never actually type in the price or number of shares, the program does it automatically when you click a particular stock ticker. Before hand you simply enter into the program the dollar amount of stock you normally like to buy and then decide if you want the total shares to be exact to the single share or rounded off to nearest 50 or 100 shares, etc. And you can always override the default if say you want to increase or decrease number of shares by however many, with a simple scroll tool that comes with program. I use Medved Quote Tracker but there are others that do just as well, sorry can't remember names but maybe others here can offer their suggestions. Medved integrates with several brokers but not all...Ameritrade, MB Trading, Interactive Brokers, Options Express, and more.
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Registered User
Joined: 10/7/2004
Posts: 2,181
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khullarnidhi;
Please review carefully your thought process on this whole thing. I frequently clown around on this forum; there's a time and a place for that. But I am deadly serious about my trading. It is only when I became so serious about it that I began to consistently do well. The markets are unrelenting and unmerciful (and that's putting it kindly).
I exhort you to ask yourself why you are using "mental stops", as you put it. I'll bet I know why. Do you?
Also, you might ask yourself why you did not have stops in place as you traveled. I suspect I know the answer there as well.
What's really important is that you know the answer; and that you have a reason that you have thought through thoroughly. Nothing; nothing should be done in your trading without a specific plan behind it. Trade the markets like you would run a business and you increase your odds for success dramatically. To borrow from all the punning going on with Diceman on another thread, play like an amateur and the pros will put you on the sidelines.
Only so tough on you in hopes that it is helpful. Hope I haven't offended. If my comments have upset you that's probably good; you may have heard something you needed (not liked, but needed).
All the best.
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Registered User
Joined: 12/2/2004
Posts: 1,775
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Well said tobydad. Mental stops certainly do test one's discipline when it's time to take action. My biggest weakness by far earlier in my trading career was pulling a stop whether mental or hard, giving price a little more room, then even more room, one more time a little more room, you get the picture. I've definitely improved in that area last few years and it shows in my balance. Today I use a combo of mental and hard stops, each has its pros and cons...mental stops are fine at times buy one must be disciplined.
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Registered User
Joined: 4/17/2006
Posts: 271
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fpetry, Thanks for the info. I did see your other post re these more automated systems, and I appreciate your reiterating info here. I've made note of these programs and will take a look at them...should prevent some lost lunches. But I guess in describing some of my errors here, I had really wanted to reinforce how much I've learned from paper-trading. I'd recommend it to any new trader. Thanks again for your info. Much appreciated!
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Registered User
Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 902
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PTT appears to be making an upward move this afternoon
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Registered User
Joined: 3/21/2006
Posts: 4,308
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I just bought some shares at $9.35
This is looking good on all fronts BOP, Money Strem, MACDH, DI+ just crossed up over DI- and HNCs indicator looks good also...
I do not know if anyone is in this but (IMO) it is a good buy right here..
Apsll..
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Registered User
Joined: 4/18/2005
Posts: 4,090
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I bought 200 at market open.. doing ok with it. Nearly all my stuff is turning up. Refused to be a knuckle head and sell in the panic.
Only AEHR still causeing hearburn... but it seems to not want to fall below the previous consolidation. i had written it off as a loss lat week but it won't hit my stop, so .. maybe i'll get a better exit after all.
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Registered User
Joined: 3/21/2006
Posts: 4,308
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I am curious what was your intentions with AEHR, and when did you buy it. There has been heavy red BOP for almost four weeks, were you shorting it? By the context of what you wrote above it sounds like you were long...
If you bought it in late March long and you still have not reached your stop loss then that would have been a very risky trade.
I think that PTT is going to be good for a few days into next week anyway.. What inspired your purchase?
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Registered User
Joined: 4/18/2005
Posts: 4,090
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PTT tripped over the chart.. and "liked" it. BOP vol STO etc after a retracement.. could still go the other way but for now I have sights set on the high of the BIG black in late FEB. Wasn't affected much by the correction then and seem to be swinging up now.
AEHR I bough on 3/19 as it poped out of the consolidation of the prior two months... now looks like it just made a new high. It kissed my stop though. I have a habit of getting out of things and seeing them cruise later. They came in under their earnings guidence but had beter guidence going foreward. Martha said it looked like a little selling on good news.
on weekly charts it has a ROC 30 down spike that martha teaches is a fairly reliable and leading indicator of a bottom to come or confirmation. Usually a couple of months out but I've seen them comence right away. I've also seen them not comence... but that is less frequent.
thoght i'd hold through the "retracement" becasue of my habbit of getting out to soon, then bop showed up, Ive seen stocks survive a little selling. This one seems to be getting trading BOP patterns.
so I have my plan and I'm sticking to it Doggedly. I considered taking my proffits the day of the black cloud but thought it was just normal fluxuations. I had been in the habbit of taking any proffit $100 or less just to log proffits .. the problem is my stop outs where averaging 2-3 times that. Not a good scenario. In looking over previous trades I see that I cut short some great trades becasue I wanted to log proffits of some kind. XBI is a prime example I bought it on 3/21 at market open and sold it on 3/22 because I had convinced myself that it was an oportunity but in weaker markets I needed to take the proffits I was given and run with them. shot myself in the foot.
In mastering the trade I read that this is a common ailment that gets started in traders that have begun to loose their confidence. Some broker guage this and project that the trader is about to blowup their account and fade ther trades. Hope it isn't true. But I bought a few things at what looked like bottoms to me at the time and if the market corrects i'm not certain i'm expecting a huge draw down like before... I'm beginning to join your camp in seeing to many good looking charts to expect serious correction.
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Registered User
Joined: 4/17/2006
Posts: 271
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PTT has been an incredible performer. 6/06 was about $1, hit a high of 12.65 on 2/26/07. Pulled back to low of 7.70 on 4/10 & 7.77 on 4/17 (which are bounces off 100 SMA and well above 200 SMA @ 5.88 and which are in vicinity of .66 Fib retracement)...during which BOP still remained green w/ just a little yellow. 4/17-4/20 everything's strengthening. StockTA site indicates PTT's sitting on a cluster of Fib Supports @ 8.85, with cluster of 6 Fib Resistances not until 10.58, 2 FR's @ 12.65 & 1 @ 14.16. Stoch, MACD turning up. RSI crossing up >50. Parabolic SAR just formed under 4/20 bar. Seems like it's got alot going for it. The only potential vulnerability I can see is an open gap up 1/11/07 from 6.24 to 6.7. Anyone see any other potential vulnerabilities?
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Registered User
Joined: 1/29/2005
Posts: 104
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PTT is finishing off a nice scoop pattern with the handle around 10. It has a good rounded bottom and has just broken up through the 50ma. A good solid stock still moving up with all other indicators backing its move.
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Registered User
Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 902
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Weekly MACD-H hasn't turned up yet. Just sayin'
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Registered User
Joined: 9/21/2005
Posts: 566
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PPD, did have a good chart, up about 10% since my note. Hopefully next time I will listen! Seriously, note on April 13 there was a relatively good decision point entry.
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