Watching this week BOOM long, FACE short

BOOM
Strong drop off after earnings drop. RSI-7 near lower 18, penetration today of lower Bollinger Band
Need to see how much further it drops, want to see RSI dropping to 10.

FACE
Surfing up upper bollinger band, but now trading inside. Nearing upper side of recent channel, RSI 77

FACE Bought to Cover @ $4.80 5% profit in 5 days

Closed FACE short position with 5% profit in 5 days. FACE still looks oversold, but this trade hit the target of 1% profit per trading day, so I'm not being greedy and closing it out. As you can see from the chart, FACE either jumps around wildly or does almost nothing, so take my philosophy is to put the profit in the bank before it makes another wild jump in the wrong direction. This stock is very lightly traded so even though these quick gains are possible, trying to trade more than 1000 shares at a time is going to mean fills are uncertain.

This is the third FACE trade I've made which made 5% in 5 days.  All three are shown on the graph below.

5% in five days - closed today
5% long day trade - Jan 3
5% short day trade - March 3

In hindsight a buy an hold with an opening price of $3.55 and a sell at $5 would have had a profit of 40% in two weeks.  But on a small, thinly traded and insanely volatile stock like FACE, the psychology of how much profit to take and when to take it would have driven me crazy. Plus there was no real indication of a sustainable uptrend in this chart.  I prefer the control of timing moves in one direction and banking the profit immediately.

FACE Short at $5.03

Another opportunity to short FACE today. Yesterday there was a huge rally, taking it above of the bollinger band (not shown in the graph below)) and way out of the channel on the FinViz chart.  I don't believe this is start of a bigger rally for FACE, so even if there is a longer term rally happening, this trade still has a good potential to make some money within a short time frame when the stock corrects down to a more reasonable price level within the channel. I think this trade is more likely to follow the pattern of my previous FACE short sale on March 3.

 Target  between $4.60 and $4.20, over next 5 days.

FACE quick 5% 1 day profit

This is the second time in just over a month that FACE has presented the opportunity for a 5% day trade. The first one was a long trade on January 20

FACE tends to trade very low volume, with occasion wild 10-20% spikes or drops in price. If you can use these to your advantage there is money to be made for a small trader. There is almost no interest by institutional or larger investors in a stock like this, because it's such a small company. It's also 44% insider owned, so I suspect these wild swings are when one or another of the board or executive team wants some cash and dumps some shares. You can't use any stops, trailing stops or triggers on a stock this volatile or lightly traded. It's just taking advantage of a situation when it arises and getting in and out fast. I'm actually surprised they TDAmeritrade let me short the stock at all.

I had an alert set on FACE to trigger if the stock traded over $4.20.  By the time I spotted the email it was already trading at the days high of $4.49. Quick risk assessment and I was in short at $4.39. Ten minutes from seeing the alert to placing the trade.

2 hours and six minutes later I sold 50% of the position for a 5% profit. Target for the remaining 50% is down by the purple moving average over the next 5 days.

Here is the 5 minute chart to see more clearly how the days price action worked. This stock is so lightly traded that you can actually see my order as in individual bar on the graph - the only trade at that price within that time interval.

FACE sold short at $4.40

Trying to make money when this huge 1 day jump corrects downwards.

See the Closing Trade

Great recovery day

Some days you wish you had just bought all of these yesterday...

Most of these I mistimed and bought on Monday before they all dropped 4-6% on some weak big corporate earnings reports. However after todays excitement things are looking positive again and I think these stocks all have lots of upside.

FACE I should have sold all when the volume was higher and I took the 5% 1 day gain. It's so thinly traded its more like gambling.

FACE quick 5% 1 day profit

Physicians Formula Holdings Inc (FACE) is a small cosmetics company whose stock price shows large price swings on occasion for apparently no reason. Basically, an awful stock to trade in a controlled way. However, this high volatility does seem to be bound within approximate trends, and I wanted to take advantage of the volatility.

I'd had this order sitting in a queue to buy at $3.55, which I calculated would be an entry point with a high probability of a bounce back to $3.90 - $4.10 (10%) within 15 days.  Basically I had forgot about the order until it got triggered yesterday after the volatility this week. FACE then jumped back 8% today along with the big jump in the indexes on the open, then promptly dropped back 3%.

 So I closed half the position for a 1 day 5% gain.

The other 50% I'll hold on to for and see if it reaches my original target profit and target duration of $3.90 within 15 trading days.