Another Case For Consistent Trading

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Well, it took a half a month of struggles, but this Thursday marks the first time in August that I’ve hit my daily $2,000 daily goal. While this is typically a common occasion at most times, I feel the need to celebrate any wins I can after the results I’ve had from this month.

I spoke a little about my dry streak in last week’s post, and the Summer slowdown has been a pretty common refrain throughout my past few articles. 

In case you’re not sick of hearing about the hazards of summer, I’ll be hosting a live webinar on Saturday, August 16, at 12:00 EDT on the Warrior Trading Facebook page as well as the Youtube channel about why August has historically been such a brutal month for me and many other day traders. 

But that’s going to be the last of my moaning about August. Since I have finally posted a healthy win this month, I want to spend this article reflecting on what made Thursday a successful trading day compared to the rest of August.

I took trades in two names on Thursday, SINTX Technologies Inc. SINT and Arcadia Biosciences Inc. RKDA. Although I had a few winning positions in RKDA throughout the past week, SINT was my only green name at $3,600 while RKDA ended up being too choppy for me to profit and cut about -$1,600 from my net.

Both stocks were near the top of my morning gap scanner, but SINT was clearly the more appealing one, gapping up about 45 percent from Wednesday’s closing price after the company reported strong quarterly financial results. Aside from that news-driven momentum, SINT had exactly the characteristics I look for in a stock. It’s trading between $1 and $10 at high volume on low float. The only knock against SINT is that the float is very low, below 1 million, which can mean some added risk for huge price swings, though that’s not a deal-breaker.

In fact, that volatility helped me trade the best move of the day in SINT. After taking a few quick trades in the opening move above $3, SINT consolidated and I watched the tape for volume to pick back up as traders bumped against resistance at $2.90. 

Suddenly, volume surged back in and pushed the stocks all the way to $3.50 in the 5-minute chart. I took my best position as the stock exited the one-minute pullback and made a move all the way up to just under $4.

I’m obviously happy with how the trade turned out. Even though it wasn’t a huge winner,  I was able to find an edge in the trade by monitoring volume and marking entry and exit points that anticipated moves in SINT 

Ultimately, the reason I could rely on those factors was that the stock’s characteristics were recognizable. Because I understood how this type of stock trades, I was able to use a strategy I was comfortable with. It’s small reminders like this that reinforce the fact that, despite some hiccups, consistency is what defines successful traders.