Post-mortem 2019W14-W18

I decided to consolidate my post-mortem posts in my blog as my monthly review. So from now on, I'll post my post-mortem in groups of 4-5 week summary.

The month of April started slow for me but eventually gained some movement towards the last week as a decent number of stocks are now creating new 52WHs and ATHs. My oldest position is still going up just when I expected it to lose its steam because I thought it was already at its top and already extended Plus that bearish divergence is hard to ignore.

One of my position still hasn't move significantly since last month so I might drop it in exchange for a faster horse. Specially now that there are some stocks on my watch list that are already creating new highs.

My port is down from -5.55% at the end of Q1 to -7.54% this April but my total equity has past breakeven now. But I cannot account it yet as those are just unrealized gains for now. We won't be able to sell at the top so my total equity might still shrink. Anyway, we'll just take what the market gives. Here's my review for the month of April.

2019W18 Portfolio Summary

2019W14-W18 Closed Trades

Closed Trades

1. DMW – The breakout happened as soon as I noticed the build-up on the ATH levels. I bought the breakout and had a good continuation candle the next day. Third day was a bearish engulfing. What I thought to be a retest of the breakout level turned out to be a strong continuation of the selloff. Slippage!!! I forgot to set my stop loss levvel on my watcher. It was already trading at 11.50 when I checked my charts. Sold at 11.40-11.30 at -6.79% average loss. -1.26% total port impact. Buy back plans on breakout on new ATH at 12.40.
2. FDC – I bought this stock since W11. At first I thought the bounce from the 20MA was going to save this stock from leaving my portfolio. But it eventually went down the 20MA and sold it as fair trade to buy the breakout of MAC. 
3. MAC – The stock was nearing its ATH levels and seems to be creating a build-up so I bought the breakout of the mini-DB in anticipation of the ATH play. But the ATH breakout never happened. 23.00 resisted and the stock started retracing. My stop loss was hit a few days after and I have to sell half my shares intraday and sold the rest at EOD. Went beyond my limit and had an average sell of -4.35%. Buy back plans at ATH breakout at 23.00. 
4. FB – the stock broke of its 52WH level at 115.00 but I wasn’t able to buy at the exact breakout. I bought my first tranche at 116.00. There was no continuation and the stock just consolidated between 114.00 and 116.00. I sold this at -2.55% loss and bought a potential faster horse. 

Open Trades

1. OPEN POSITION A (since W14) – The stock broke out of its mini-DB (10.60) and 52WH level (10.80). I didn’t manage to buy exactly during the breakout. I bought near EOD at 10.88 and at EOD at 10.90. The stock consolidated above 10.80 levels for two weeks and made a mini breakout of DB. I just held as my stop loss is still intact. It consolidated again for another week with tight range. And finally broke out of the mini DB and its 12.00 resistance. Then it broke 13.00 level. I was planning to add at the break of 13.00 but it was already trading beyond 3% from breakout level in the afternoon session so I didn’t chase the price. 
2. OPEN POSITION B (since W13) – The stock just moved up 2-4% since I bought the breakout of 2.50 levels. It hasn’t move significantly since then and has been on a tight consolidation for the whole month. Price is now sitting right at 20MA. I am looking at dropping this stocks as my slowest horse once the overall market sentiment gets better and my faster horse starts moving in the right direction. 
3. OPEN POSITION C (since W7) – this stock consolidated for four weeks before finally making a breakout of its DB and created a new ATH. Created a new DB and closed this week at DB top. Another breakout maybe? Trail stops are set. 
4. OPEN POSITION D (since W18) – this stock showed a good upward momentum from 2.10 levels and slowly building up until it broke out of its 52WH level at 2.95. I forgot to edit my excel sheet watch list for this stock but fortunately I set my targets on my alert notifications on my watcher and drew its key levels on my chart. So I was notified by the breakout and was able to buy the breakout but I waited until EOD as the stock was coming from a tangled MA alignment and was just transitioning to AOTS. Now on its 3rd day continuation. 

Observation and Comments

1. Computing for the right position size based on risk is tricky if you’ll be doing tranching.
2. FDC - I let an 8% gain turned to a fair trade. Piranha. 
3. I didn’t follow my cut loss plan for FDC when it was already below 20MA and previous DB. There's a feeling of hope that the stock will bounce back and the justification of the thinking that 'there's no other stock that is moving on my watchlist so it's okay if I held on this one much longer' which is clearly an issue.
4. ATH plays doesn’t always mean Borg Plays. Overall market condition still generally affects most stocks movement. MAC and DMW doing their pullbacks as per their DNA. Buy on pullbacks? 
5. Still trying to practice proper position sizing and port allocation. 
6. I was tempted to add to a position even though there’s no signal for it. The rule is - add on succeeding breakout. But then it broke out the next day. Giving myself the ‘I told you so’ regret. 
7. Open Position B – I added on breakout but price went down the next day. Checking the DNA, CPM has a habit of a down day after a breakout or a significant move candle. 
8. Overall market sentiment still not good. Several ATH plays still don’t have the momentum to rise up. Except for a very few outliers. 
9. Open Position C – I am following this guy on Investa who posts materials about ‘bases’ on uptrends. How an uptrending stock has 5 bases to complete before it dies. Open Position C and WLCON have broken out of its respective 5th bases. I guess they are proving to be an outlier indeed.

Suggested Fix/Solutions

1. Roadblock – use the ‘4 positions, 25% allocation’ instead of the VAR computation for easy position sizing.
2. Try tranche selling to lock in some of my gains to avoid Piranhas. Especially with the market still on sideways. Be protective of my capital and profits. 
3. Don't hope. Learn to accept and acknowledge when my bias is already invalidated. And just have a buy-back plan. Always prioritize my technical cut.
4. NR – study stock’s Breakout DNA. Some stocks have successive breakouts; some have consolidations and pullbacks before continuation of breakout. 
5. HP – Try applying a rule about losing streak to manage risk. Sample – if you lose 4-5 consecutive trades, reduce your allocation size or risk lower % of your capital per trade. 
6. AC – 4 positions for port allocation is ideal but you can tweak it to have only 1 or up to 3-5 positions, as long as you’re comfortable with the allocations and position size. 
7. I can make a case study for this kind of pattern where price action create higher lows approaching DB top and makes a breakout after – a build up before the breakout. 
8. Just be patient on waiting for my setups to materialize. No rush. 
9. Just react on what the market gives. Sell if there’s a sell signal from my system.

Overall, my port is doing OK, I think. I'm trying to stick to the '4 positions, 25% allocation' but I already have one position that's above that percentage so I'm compensating my risk exposure by reducing my size on the other 3. I also have the option of dropping the slowest and keep just the 3 of my positions and maintain a 50-25-25 allocation. This will all depend on how the market sentiment plays on the following weeks.