Chart pretty much sums up my morning! Waited and waited for a solid set-up and finally got on in Macy's. Decided I would get in on a break of LOD @ $21.85 at the time and my stop would be one penny above the whole $22.00 as it tested twice and couldn't break through.

After following through a bit the stock just turned right around and ripped through $22.00 triggering my hard stop I had put in @ $22.01. So I figured damn...guess the $22.00 support is gonna hold after all in spite of the bad earnings plus weak over all market. 

However, to my surprise the stock just turned on a dime and started tanking just as I thought it would straight down to the $21.00 support level I had set as my target in my initial trade plan.

So, I lost money but I learned 2 valuable lessons:

1) Gotta give stocks room around support/resistance levels including whole and half dollar marks when placing my stops. Any where from 5 to as much as 20 cents depending on the price of the stock.

2) I'm going to use the ATR 10 on my 5-minute chart to determine my position size instead of sizing off entry price - a specific stop out price level on the chart.  So if for instance the ATR 10 is around $0.25 as it was for M at the time I took the trade...I would get in with 200 shares instead of the 300 I got in with ($50/$0.25 or max loss/ATR10) and then set my hard stop at the price corresponding to the maximum loss I'm willing to take on the trade. In this case, my entry was $21.85...so my hard stop would have been $22.10 instead of $22.01 giving it sufficient room above the resistance level but stil protecting my account from a catastrophic loss. 

You live and you learn. Looking forward to Friday and ending the week strong!!!