My New Valentine

Valentine One that is. I've wanted one for a while and I finally bit the bullet and ordered a Valentine One Radar/Laser detector. I've heard great things about this model and this company in general and I'm looking forward to seeing how well it works.Recently I got a new car (new used car) that is quite a bit faster than what I'm used to so I figured this would be a great investment. With a price tag of roughly $400, this thing will pay for itself if it saves me from one speeding ticket. The Valentine One is supposed to be the best for early detection and it has a couple of cool features. For one, it tells you how many different signals it's picking up, like multiple cops, it tells you what type of radar is being picked up and it even informs you of the direction the signal is coming from (like front, behind, side). All very cool sounding features that seem practical and useful.

I must admit, I was out driving at speeds up to 115 mph within an hour of getting this yesterday..although I'm not recommending that to anyone...just wanted to open up my car a little and see how it does at those speeds.

One last thing about this detector and company that I like is that they provide a very informative booklet with the detector. The booklet does a great job of breaking down what radar is and is not and what the detector will and won't do. This box is not a magical device that saves you from all speeding tickets and this company does not present it in that manner. I like that and I think that the way this company provides a great and easy to follow booklet to teach what is practical and what is unrealistic lends the company credibility.

I'll post an update in a month or two to follow up with a review of the radar/laser detector.

It's been a crazy market..hope you guys have traded well (and I hope you've been watching/trading LVS..wow).

TLT

LVS: A Look at the End of Day Execution Chart

I traded LVS a little today. Wish that it was the only thing that I traded because I managed to rack up some losses early on but was fortunate enough to make them up and then some with LVS. This stock was an animal today...it just kept charging higher. One thing that I do on a daily basis is take screen shots of the execution charts for all the stocks that I traded that day. I have this setup through LightSpeed, the broker, with a 5m bar chart that shows all of the buy (green dots) and sell (red dots) for the day. My LVS chart for today is interesting. Reviewing these charts is helpful to me both on good and bad days.

As you can see from the chart, I made 5 trades in LVS today. I had more than 5 positions because I scaled into or out of some of the trades but I'll still consider this 5 total trades. Trade number one was a good start. It made money quickly and hit small profit target right off the bat. I usually book profits quickly when I trade within the first 15 minutes of the day because it's hard to get a feel for the market as a whole with such a short amount of time trading.

Trade number 2 was my big money maker. The reason that I found this execution chart interesting is because it really puts my trades in a good perspective in relation to the price action. I loaded up for this trade and I tried to hold as long as I could. It felt like a huge move that took forever, but it wasn't that big in relation to the rest of the day's action. Goes to show that one or two well managed trades that offer up a .30-.40 profit can make good money for a day trader.

This is what a good day's worth of trading one stock looks like for me. Sure I booked profits a little soon and I would have come out way ahead if I'd a just bought the open or the opening range break out and walked away or closed my eyes until the close, but this trading is what works for me. I can look at this chart and say that I should hold longer after the fact, but if today would not have offered up much follow through, these trades would look like solid gold. Obviously I'm still learning to gauge follow through but overall I'm happy with today's trades in LVS.

Hope everyone had a good Monday.

TLT