I often remember that my teacher once said: “Day Trading is a boring business, but it is profitable”. The more I get into day trading, the more I can understand his words. All you need to do in day trading is follow the routine: get up in the morning at 8am, turn on the computer to check the market news at 8:30am, fill out the watch list ,and then wait till the market opens at 9:30am. And then check the stocks to find potential trading patterns, see if they develop …

In my previous articles, I have defined my Grade A (the best tradable) and Grade B (good tradable) patterns. If you haven’t read them, please click here for article Part A and here for Part B. In this article, I am going to define a few stock patterns that we should try to avoid. These patterns look like they have a real good trend and are usually very tempting to novice traders. However, they fail more often than succeed. These patterns are like teasers from the fisherman (often the big …

I have summarized the three best trading patterns in my Part A article, and have named them the Grade A patterns. If you haven’t read the Part A article, I highly recommend you to click here and read it before going further.
My Grade B stock patterns are still tradable patterns, but have a relatively lower success rate than Grade A patterns both in terms of stock failing to move in the expected direction, and the distance the stock can go in the expected direction (in other words, the profit potential …

Today, I have seriously taken a look at my successful and unsuccessful trades over the past couple of weeks and found that stock patterns actually have different degrees of success rate. Certain patterns or setups show a greater success rate than others. Therefore, I have graded these patterns as A and B according to their success rate.
Grade A patterns have the best success rate. I have so far summarized 3 unique patterns as GRADE A Patterns.  Here they are:
1. Early Morning 45 Degree Breakthrough Intra-day Pattern:
This pattern usually forms …

MHK is a great stock that I missed today. To be exact, I didn’t missed the stock, but I missed the right entry point. I actually entered the stock twice. The first time was at a fake breakout point, and the second time was at a less favorable point that I was not comfortable to stay for long. Take a look at the pattern first:

The first time I entered the trade, was right after the stock dip under $58 at $57.84. The stock first showed strong momentum to go down, …

Today, I encountered three beautiful early morning breakout patterns. They either opened flat or with a small gap up. The stocks were first stopped by yesterday’s high level, but quickly broke out of that level and shot up high. This has become my favorite pattern in the early morning session. It has a very high success rate and usually formed the setup early in the morning (often before 10am). Take a look below:
The first one is BID, which broke out completely on the 4th 5 minutes bar.

The ideal entry point …

Today, I encountered one beautiful pattern and one ugly one. The sad story is, I let the beauty go, and engaged myself with the ugly one twice.  I didn’t observe the trading rules and eventually dug a big hole for myself. I used up all my morning time to recover my losses and has merely made it. It was a tough day for me, all because I failed to observe the rules: money management with position sizing, and detachment from my emotions.
Take a look at my losses first:

This morning, the …

POT showed an interesting pattern today. It opened high above yesterday’s high, then dipped down through the 10ema, then again through today’s early morning low, and then through yesterday’s high. It was temporarily stopped by yesterday’s high level, and struggle over an hour until it finally dipped down into intra-day range, showing a good sign of downside movement. The potential entry point is mid-day low at 146.32. The potential upside exit point is 10ema which is 146.51, and the downside exit point is yesterday’s low which is 143.64. A whopping …

FSLR is the trade I entered today, and I’d like to put it in the best tradable pattern category. Why? Let’s see:

FSLR started today way below yesterday’s low because of earning disappointment. It tried to close gap as shown in early morning green bars, but failed to break through the 10sma resistance, and started to go down. It tried again, but again failed and broke the $140 decade number. Got a bit of support by that number, but after the small dogi, it resumed the down trend and gives a …

Today’s trading is not bad, except for one trade: MCP, which I lost big–$233 after commission. I did obey the rules–I entered at break out point, wait for less than 10min and find it didn’t go my way, then I exited immediately. However, the problem is, I entered a wrong trade: an intra-day trade. Take a look at the stock below.

Intra-day stocks are stocks whose price is between yesterday’s low and high. Usually these type of stocks have a unpredictable movement and should be avoided. The best tradable stocks are …