ATHE

Alerity Therapeutics Limited.
It’s a biotech that trades on the Nasdaq.
They work primarily in the Parkinson’s department.
It’s an Australian company.

It’s run in the past. It’s actually had some pretty respectable spikes. But it never holds its gains. It’s a one-and-done. Well, that’s never stopped a stock before. Except that it does literally stop them.

It ran in premarket because they got a patent for their compound for neurodegenerative disorders.

Patent news isn’t really that thrilling most of the time.

This was the only stock that I was tracking in premarket that had both exceeded and sustained higher than average forecast volume.

“What the fuck does that mean?”

I’m glad you asked.

I’ve been tracking volume throughout the day on select stocks.

My criteria is: Less than $500 million market cap, up at least 5% during premarket, trading at least 500 thousand shares during premarket.

At different times of day, I record the volume of the stocks that I’m tracking.

Then, I divide the volume at that time by the volume during premarket.

I take those multiples and I get the average of all the samples and the median of all the samples.

If you know anything about stats – which I didn’t when I started – you know that averages are much bigger than medians. For reasons that this post is not about.

So, when I saw that ATHE was exceeding average volume, I thought that it would outperform the other stocks that I was watching. It did, but they didn’t perform very well. So low bar.

Anyway.

I thought that because it was a biotech, it was hot sector. It was only tangentially related to anything to do with the cure. In that it was a biotech.

It was forming my favorite pattern, an ascending triangle. So, I thought that if it broke high of day, it would run 75 cents.

You see, with an ascending triangle, there’s a way to set what may be a reasonable target.

You take the resistance, subtract the base, and that’s how far the stock should run from the breakout if it breaks out.

So, when it broke out, I bought with that price in mind.

I wanted $4.25 for it. The breakout was at $3.40, but I didn’t want to buy at the $3.40 break with $3.50 resistance right over head, so I waited for the half dollar break.

It didn’t work out.

I had a mental stop-loss, as I often do. My order was typed out so that if anything went wrong, I could just hit sell and get out. Unfortunately, the pull was rather rapid. So even as I hit sell, it flew through my stop.

My order sat there.

I’m proud of myself. Old me would have panicked and chased the stock down, but I could see that it was at support.

I considered adding, averaging down and softening the blow. But I have a psychological problem with that still. If I average down and it keeps going further, I just double-fuck myself. I’d prefer not to.

But I didn’t panic out either. I entered an order to change my order in case I didn’t get the bounce I was looking for. If it took out support again, I would take the harder loss.

Fortunately, it bounced up to my exit and I got out for slightly less than 1R. At my stop.

It turned out to be damn near the second top for the rest of the day, too. Thing took my stop sell and didn’t come back all day.

It’s frustrating.

I’ve been winning lately. I think because I stopped committing to record my trades on profit.ly.

The pressure of the profit chart was getting to me. Especially with how low it is. Not as bad as some, I know, but I don’t like it.

So I haven’t been recording my trades and I’ve been performing well.

Now I’m committed again to reporting my trades and blogging on them and… well, here we are.

Tomorrow will be better.

The worst part

After this loss, I was feeling less confident. I missed good trades on WWR, SUNW, and CBAT. Those are trades I may have taken otherwise.

I can’t entirely blame this trade, though. I did have to step away midday for most of the day and I think I got out of the flow.

TL:DR

This trade was on a one-and-done on a medium float (22 million) stock that wasn’t in the hot sector.