The Notable New Highs list for Monday, provided by Maoxian, showed a number of Telecom stocks continuing their way up. The Telecom HOLDRs have been edging up since July. I’d like to see how TTH handles a pullback on the weekly chart however, before getting too excited about this being the start of a stage 2 rally.

After 4 years of consolidation, and a huge price void overhead though, the sector definitely has potential.

Note the volume breakout in CMCSA, Comcast today.

As Ugly points out, one of the difficult things to do as a trader is to try determine the market’s direction when it gaps higher or lower to start the morning session. Today was one of those days, as the Nasdaq popped off of the opening bell. Staying patient, and waiting for setups is the best you can do. That worked in one of my trades in Core Laboratories NV (CLB), today.

CLB has been in a downtrend for almost 3 weeks, falling from 80 to the high 50’s. This stock is on my watchlist of around 150 stocks.

On the 5-minute chart, Core Laboratories put in a quick bottom. The 5, 15, and 60-minute charts were all in a downtrend and the moving averages pointing down. When the first lower high is formed on the 5-minute candlestick a short sell should be executed. Wrong! It’s not that easy. In fact, choosing the direction of your trade is a big part of your battle. Learn to be patient. By looking at the weekly chart, I noticed some trendline support (Looking at multiple time frames helps with the big picture). I decided to let the stock form another pivot, or break the day’s low.

CLB formed a pivot at point 2. When it broke the prior pivot at point 1, I bought a 1/2 R. I did this because I was fighting the trend. A stop-loss below the day’s low was set. At point 5, another 1/2 R of the stock was bought. 1/3 of the shares were sold as the stock triggered a trailing stop by trading a lower low on the 5-minute chart. I decided on that stop method to lock in some profits, yet let the stock run. I probably should have sold the 2nd 1/3 as CLB approached 2R, but I’ve decided to use hourly pivots on the 2/3 CLB left in case this is a bottom.

Moving averages are flattening out, and are slowly turning up on the 5 and 15-minute charts. We’ll see if CLB can participate in some end of quarter window dressing.

Trading in BIDU was pretty much a non-event. The stock decided to drift all day after moving up in the morning. I took the sloppy BL2 setup, but dumped it later for .6 R after the stock failed to move higher along with the rest of the market.

Yesterday, MZZ was one of the stock picks to keep on the radar. It stalled right at it’s downtrend line, and fell from there. That was a little signal that the market was going to put on a rally today. It’s still tough to catch stocks when they’re moving up all day.