Online Stock Trading | KYPH Kyphon Inc

Sitting and doing nothing is a major portion of online stock trading. Boredom is good. You won’t always have action. Yesterday was one of those type of days. Waiting for a day trading pattern rewarded this patient trader today.

Three stock trades were provided by the morning gap list. These are stocks gapping up or down from the previous close a significant amount. I’m usually looking for a .50 - 1.00 gap at a minimum. KYPH, KOSP, and DDSS were the the traders today.

The first trade in KYPH, Kyphon Inc. was executed using a BS2 trading pattern. Having a stock trading system that allows you to execute your trades automatically, takes the guesswork out of knowing if the trade should be taken. Once you learn a few patterns, it boils down to trading psychology. That’s where it gets tough!

The length of the 4th bar on the 15-minute chart was .47. I wanted to help out my R for this trade, and thought the stock might go a little higher again first. If it didn’t, I would just miss the trade. This strategy worked and the trade was filled with R = .31. I used the same number of shares I would have, had I used .47 as R. If I was wrong, it would basically result in losing less in the trade. And losing small amounts is the strategy you want to take. A stop-loss was set a penny over the day high. 1/3 of the stock was covered at 1.6 R. The 2nd 1/3 at 1.6 R, and the rest held for the next trading session on Monday. I will probably use a pivot, or prior day’s high method for the stop-loss.

Waiting for your trading system to present a trading opportunity takes patience. After I executed my trades in the morning and the market slowed down mid-day, I left my monitors for a while. Trading stocks online is a marathon, not a sprint. Take time to wait for your setups and trade conciously.