Three Sucky Days

I've had three sucky days in a row. If I can't make money in amarket with this kind of volatility, then I am doing something wrong. Time for some post-mortem analysis:

All trades for November 7, when the market was showing DOWN most of the day.

CY
Gap & Trap Short at 39.03, stopped out at 38.97 for a +.3R gain
No news of interest. This had gapped up, then closed the gap and was continuing south. I entered when the second bar showed it was continuing down. It continued in my direction for the duration of the 2nd bar, so I changed my stop loss to a trailing stop. I got stopped out on the third bar. The action continued up to the level of the previous day's close, and then bounced its way down on the first bar when it was about 40c below yesterday's close.

Lesson: In retrospect, I had no good reason to enter this trade. It had already closed the gap, and it was too early to call a continuation flag.

ONXX
Gap & Trap Short at 52.29, stopped out at 52.58 for a -1R loss
Continuation Flag Short at 54.58, stopped out at 54.99 for a -1R loss
This had gapped up on a good earnings announcement, that I misread. The announcement said that projected earnings were (.21) and actual earnings were .01, which shows that they beat by .22, but I somehow read it as projected of .22 and actual of .01, which I interpreted to mean they missed by .20.

Lesson: Obviously I was on the wrong side of this both times. Had I read the news correctly, I could have ridden this guy up for about 12R. Ouch!!!

TSO
Continuation Flag Short at 59.70, stopped out at 60.15 for a .9R loss
This was a case where I was right about everything but the stop. Had I set my stop at or above the day's open, I would have been able to ride this puppy down to less than 57.00. Again, I missed a ton of dough on this one.

Lesson: I need to do some more analysis about the size of my stops. I was too conservative for my own good here.

BTU
Continuation Flag Long at 54.83, stopped out at 54.32 for a -1R loss
I had a nice big pole to play off here, and tried to get in on the second bar after the formation of the pole. In retrospect, the previous bar was a spinning top, which should have warned me that the stock was ripe for a turn. Had I gone short instead of long off the spinning top, I had more than a dollar of movement.

Lesson: On a CF, let the pennant form two bars before deciding to play. In addition, do NOT play off a spinning top until the direction is established.

JASO
Cont Flag Long at 62.51, stopped out at 62.04 for a -1R loss
This one appeared to be a well-formed flag. I had a nice long pole - more than 50c - followed by a 3 bar pennant moving opposite the direction of the pole. I looked perfect to me, but I was completely wrong. The "fabric" portion of the pennant was admittedly not very good - perhaps that was my mistake. As I look at it, the first bar of the fabric was nicely formed and closed down, the second bar was a spinning top with very long stems and the third bar was an inverted hammer. IOW, I guess the fabric was not a strong pattern after all.

Lesson: Pay attention to the fabric of the flag. This was a weak pattern to trade on.