Knowing what you want see!!!

Often throughout the post we talk about indicators we do and don’t want to focus on to feel confident in our trade ideas.  Today the pieces of the picture came together for long bias trade ideas.  One particular trade that played out well today was NTAP long.    First setting up the trade; we can see over the past five trading day NTAP made higher highs on the daily charts from last week’s rally to test August highs of 44.90.  So coming into today we identified that a break and hold above 45.00 greatly increased our chances for follow through. 

When the markets opened NTAP immediately traded and closed above the 45.00 level during the first  5 min. trading triggering the first(aggressive) long entry (because this was a A long trade).   If you missed this entry waiting more conformation the stock pulled back several times during the morning trading (as you can see on the charts below) for you to manage risk.  The price action in NTAP created higher highs with clean readable pauses.   NTAP never trigger the stop/loss by forming a lower low on the 15 min. chart or traded below the 20SMA on the 5min chart until mid-day hours.    

 The key here was recognizing that the conditions in the market and in the stock lined up to take advantage of planned trade idea.