Waiting for the level, on a thin election morning
Three names came in at a planned price and were worked that way: a short laddered in from the morning report and covered on the first real push lower, and another taken on a second rejection of VWAP, scaled at the first target with the stop pulled to breakeven and a runner held for the swing. One short was stopped exactly where the stop had been set. Several other ideas on our desk were simply cancelled, including one killed on spread alone.
The morning in figures
Net points are per share. Apply your own size to get your own number: at 1,000 shares, 1.20 points is $1,200.00. At 100 shares it is $120.00. At one share it is $1.20. The desk publishes the move, not a dollar result, because the dollars depend entirely on how you size, and that is your decision rather than ours.
The 1h 11m session is on the other side of this.
Everything above is the write-up. This is the morning itself, with the names on every call and the room talking through it.
The Apple short was the cleanest piece of work of the morning and it took the longest to arrive. A ladder of orders was placed above and below the level from the morning report, left sitting while the stock chopped under its gap, pulled by two people on the desk when the price looked like it would never trade there, and kept alive by a third. It filled on a late push into the level, took a small amount of heat against the average, and was covered on the first move down rather than held for the bigger gap fill that was being discussed on the same chart. A quick, planned exit on a day nobody expected to trend.
Google was the other one worked properly. The name had spent the whole session under VWAP, and the short was taken on the second test back up into it, with the stop placed just above and a first target marked out under a point lower. As it worked, the first target was moved slightly further out rather than taken early, the stop was tightened to just over the session highs, and once the scale filled the remainder went to breakeven with a swing add already mapped at a level further down. Entry, management and the plan for what happens next were all stated before the position needed them.
The Oracle short was stopped above a tightening range, on a stop chosen for structure rather than convenience, and the name kept going afterwards. Alongside that, a watched name was dropped outright once the bid ask was checked and found to be more than a point wide, and an Apple long level was cancelled when price stopped short of it. On an election day with a jobs print inside the hour, more of the morning went into declining trades than taking them, and that was the correct shape for the tape.
Every trade called that morning
Losers included. Rows with more than one leg were scaled out; open any row to see each exit.