AAPL Set Up / Follow Up

One of the things that differentiates a pro trader from a retail trader is tenacity, I won't quote him right now, but Jesse Livermore (as in of the book by his name, "World's Greatest Trader") alluded to this in one of the best pieces of big picture advice I've heard. He also went broke like Donald Trump several times, Tenacity.

A pro will take several shots at the same trade until they get the positioning they want whereas amateurs or lets say "non-pros", will take 1 sot at a trade, usually take too big of a loss and walk away from the trade idea and subconsciously they'll even avoid the stock again in the future or they'll be fixated on it like they'll get revenge. I'm not knocking it, I'm just saying it's human nature. A pro can take several shots at the same position because they keep their losses small.

I've found more often than not you can be right about a stock or a market and the difference between making money and losing it is all on the tactical side, the entry and exit.

So yesterday I closed the SECOND AAPL Dec. $535 put in as many days, the P/L for this one (the last was slightly above break-even) was...

2 contracts at a cost of $27.20 each (remember I said I wanted to leave room to add just in case) and the exit was $27.95 for a slight gain of +2.75%, but I didn't close it for that reason.

I didn't go for a regular equity short because I still have some concern with the longer end of the charts, 30/60 min which had been perfectly in line, the 30 min and even 60 went negative at the recent high as you can see above on this 30 min, this makes me more comfortable with an AAPL short, but I'm not yet comfortable with an equity short, but a shorter duration leveraged trade, Puts, yes and that's the entry I'm looking for possibly today (for a 3rd time).

 AAPL accumulation and distribution- 30 min

The 15 min chart shows what looks like a reasonable reversal process, but this is only part of the uptrend, it's fine for a quick options trade, for an equity short, as I said, I'm not sold yet.

This is what makes me think AAPL has a shot at higher prices and why I didn't want to sit in a put during that, there were smaller signals yesterday, but ultimately its a 5 min chart, it's below resistance, it's a head fake move, volume is there, it did what it should have done so they can take this higher (form where it is now, I'm not making predictions about how high, I'll let AAPL/3C tell me that).

So that's what I'm looking for in AAPL. I'll let you know of course as always before any entry or exit, but I am really NOT sold on an equity short and really I'm looking only at the trend above this chart so duration is not especially long, thus the need for leverage.