My Radar Trade In JCG

sspencerSMB Radar Update, Steven Spencer (Steve's) Blogs5 Comments

At 9:45 I glanced over at the SMB Radar, our proprietary scanning tool, and saw JCG towards the top of the volatility spike column.  I punched it up on my platform and it appeared to be a pretty good short set up.  It had just a had a strong opening drive through the prior day’s two key support levels and was consolidating in a tight range by today’s low.

I nibbled on the short.  I also called out to those on my desk that I was short and what the key levels in the stock were. A few other traders on the desk joined in getting short.  We all shorted more when it dropped the intraday low and waited to see if it would trade down to the support area on the long term chart at 33.30.  It soon traded down to that level and my bid was hit at 33.31 to cover some of my position.

When it held above 33.40 for a few minutes I got flat with the intention of reshorting at 33.60.  I left instructions with one of our young guns to re-establish on a spike higher thinking that with the relative weakness it was showing to the market it could close at the low of the day.  It had the spike up to resistance while I was off the desk providing a nice short entry point and eventually traded through the lows.

5 Comments on “My Radar Trade In JCG”

  1. Please keep blogging trades originating from SMB Radar. I am a new subscriber and entries like this one are a big help in using this great tool.

  2. first go to finviz.com and sort out stocks with ATR over 1, volume over 1mil, price 20 to 80..

    then you can make your own “RADAR” in Thinkorswim platform by adding a column into a watch list with formula “open” – “last close” the stocks with most positive and negative numbers will be your volatility stocks

    no need to pay money for simple stuff like that

  3. Tapereader:
    We will write more about the Radar soon, but I can assure you it’s not nearly that simple. Three traders collaborated on it, and it incorporates a lot of pieces of algorithms and mechanical systems that I personally have developed over the past decade. I am a big believer in, as Einstein is supposed to have said, that things “should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler.” The SMB Radar is hundreds of lines of computer code, which was as simple as we could make it, considering that it incorporates nearly a dozen separate logic modules and algorithms.

    I agree with you, I certainly would not pay money for a simple TOS “RADAR”, but the SMB tool is something else entirely. Sorry to be cryptic–we’re still dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s, but will have much more to say about this very soon!

  4. steve,

    i will try to do at least one per week. i’ve also asked the two traders primarily responsible for the programming of the tool to blog some of their trades as well.

    steve

  5. tapetrader,

    finviz.com is a great site for certain things. good to see what is going on in various sectors. in terms of using it as a real time trading tool probably not. i do know they offer a premium package that upgrades quotes to real time but not sure about the filtering service being able to match our algos # crunching in real time for every stock in our trading universe.

    steve

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