CHKR Rebounding 4.9% in 3 trading days

A couple of months ago I made a small profit in CHKR during a long uptrend. I could have let them run further, but chose to take the profit from that trade.

Then CHKR went on a huge nosedive, from a high of $30.21, down to $17.37 just some days ago. I re-entered at $18.93 based on classic technical reversal pattern.

• Bounce off multi-day bollinger band penetration (six red candles in a row, all crossing the lower bollinger band)
• EMA-5 (green line) flat
• RSI bottomed out below 10 and climbing
• MAC-D crossing upward (blue line crossing yellow)  under the center line

So far I've been rewarded - CHKR is up 4.91% in 3 trading days. My usual rule of thumb is that if a stock makes more than 1% per trading day, you are better off selling than holding, as you've likely hit a short term spurt, with a pullback will follow.

However, as this is a dividend paying stock, I'm planning to hold for longer, or even increase the position if a trend develops and I can get back in on a pullback.   If the current spurt gets much bigger,  and it looks ready for even sharper pullback, I'll be looking to sell at somewhere near a daily high to maximise use of capital. Short term profits over-rule long term dividends in my trading plan.

5.1% profit in ONXX in 7 trading Days

Normally I don't like pharmaceutical companies, with all the rumor and hype cycles about their latest FDA approval sagas. But this chart looked interesting, with a huge selloff after a big rally,  support around $42, and a new uptrend developing.

The chart showed long term rise, and after May's meltdown of the market in general (don't tell me I didn't warn you as far back as March...) I thought ONXX might be an interesting reversal play.

Turns out 5.1% in 7 trading days was a worthwhile trade. It didn't quite reach my 1% per trading day profit goal, but as there were three green daily candles in a row, and it blasted up to through the upper bollinger band, a pull back is overdue already. If this trade had exited a day earlier, so would have put the money straight into Pandora again, and made another 16% profit by Friday after their earnings announcement.

ONXX could go higher, as you can see from the continuation of the rally after I exited (blue dotted line is my trade). However,  I think we are going to see a summer of volatility, so I'd prefer to take profits that match my trading plan, rather than gamble on further gains when the market has no clue idea how it is going to respond to Europe's on-again off-again summer of self destruction.

Pandora delivers 12% in 13 trading days

After gritting my teeth and praying on volatile Pandora (P), the genie came out of the box and delivered a healthy 12% in 13 trading days. This real money trade had an entry at $8.70 and closed at $9.77.

 Pandora got a big boost this week from news that  they announced an 52% increase in listening hours  - maybe from people like me who run Pandora in the background while analyzing stock charts...So this could be the start of a bigger trend. Remember I was was set up to make 40% on Pandora earlier in the year, but got stopped out because of the volatility and was too scared it was going to crash again to get back in.

On this trade my judgement call was that a nearly 1% per day gain is a situation where you want to take profits and then look for a re-entry point back closer to the EMA - shown by the green line on the graph below. I'm using the 5-day EMA because mostly I characterize myself as a swing trader. A longer EMA would have too much lag time, leading to missed entry and exit points.   Another factor in my decision to take profits was that I had no stop loss, trailing stop or profit-taking order on this trade. Pandora's volatility is such that any of these strategies are going to backfire one way or another, so you just have to grit your teeth and trust your daily decision making skills.

My profit on this trade perfectly fit the analysis on SeekingAlpha.com (see article link above) so all credit to their powers of observation "I still see Pandora as a stock for investors who like to play ranges. Look for low points near $8.50 and high points near $9.25 for the time being"