Gaining confidence

Australian consumer confidence jumped unexpectedly on the back of the rate cut which may have been "baked in" for financial market participants but was probably a slight surprise to the average consumer. It's helped the retailers to rally.

I bought some DJS last Friday at 321 on the close. I was looking for a higher low to have been made but I was in two minds as to whether to take the trade because there wasn't much momentum despite a strong day in the overall market. My stop was below Thursday's low although I was tempted to sell out yesterday morning on a trailing stop. The stop just held and the stock has had a strong rally on the consumer news to be up 13 as we approach the close.

My stop is going to stay at 309 for now but if there's some follow through tomorrow I'll move it up to breakeven.

PXS traded in a narrow range yesterday but has pushed on again today. I've moved my stop to 132, just below yesterday's low.

I've got a couple of prospects for new trades to enter on the close. The first is a long in OST. The steel business remains a basket case and with the company having expanded its iron ore interests at an inopportune moment, it was hit by a double whammy. Iron ore has found short term support and with the steel operations heavily discounted by the market, it's probably fair to consider it as an iron ore play. The chart looks incomplete on the downside but there's a big gap and it's just about worth a long position especially since there's a decent 1-2-3 low signal. With a stop at 92 and the close looking like it'll touch 100, I'll probably just buy around 20k.

The other opportunity is to short WSA. There was a marginal new high at the top of the range which weakened intraday. I'll just risk $1000 so with a stop at 610, the position size will be around 6000 shares assuming that I deal at around 594.

4.18 OST touched 100 but closed at 99.5 and WSA at 598. I put on a few more trades on the match, both long and short, and since I'm still playing around with my approach, I kept the position size and risk small.

PXS has announce that the Australian pharmaceutical benefits scheme has not approved their cystic fibrosis drug yet and I'm hoping that the market wasn't banking on it. The stock rallied on EU approval in late October.