Waiting on a level while a sector dumped on unseen news
The morning's first idea was a patient one: a base being built in RKLB, with the entry held back until the short-term average flattened, a starter on, an add staged just underneath and a stop below the shelf. The add never filled, which quietly changed the working average and left the stop closer than intended; the dip took it out with slippage. From there the desk moved to a broad biotech and pharma flush nobody could source, and a Starbucks drop on a takeover headline that turned out to be recycled.
The morning in figures
Net points are per share. Apply your own size to get your own number: at 1,000 shares, 0.18 points is $180.00. At 100 shares it is $18.00. At one share it is $0.18. 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 RKLB plan was laid out before a share was bought: support from the prior week, no entry until the ten-second average flattened, a starter, an add a few cents lower and a stop beneath the shelf. That is the right order to do it in. What went wrong was downstream of the plan. The add was placed just above where price actually turned, so it never filled, and the position stayed half-size with an average higher than the one being carried in the head. When the dip came, the stop that had been sized against a full position was sitting too close, and it got hit with slippage on the way through.
Worth noticing how long it took to establish whether the add had filled. That gap is the real cost, not the stop itself; for several minutes the position was being managed against numbers that were not true. A quick check of the fill before the next decision would have reframed the whole trade: smaller size, more room, or simply a flat and a re-entry once the level held.
The second half of the session was spent chasing causes rather than setups. Biotech and pharma dumped across the board with no news anyone could find, and that search stayed a search. Nothing was taken on a guess. Starbucks dropped on a takeover headline, with Chipotle bid in sympathy, and a short went on; the headline turned out to be stale, which is the risk you accept when you trade a print before you have verified its age.
Heard in the room
TrueTrader is a live trading desk — a group of traders working the market open out loud, every weekday. These are unedited captures from that room on this morning, in the order they were said.
On a slow, low-volume session mixed in with routine levels, he advises members to occupy themselves so boredom doesn't push them into regrettable trades.
“Please find something that can take your time and you you can be scalping.”
Every trade called that morning
Losers included. Rows with more than one leg were scaled out; open any row to see each exit.