Day Trading Stocks on 30-sec Chart: Agilent Technologies (A)

Day trading Agilent Technologies stock (NYSE:A) using the 30-second chart increased my profit and loss statement by 235 US dollars yesterday. A single trade was enough to make 45 cents per share in 6 minutes. One of my day trading rules is to follow the trend, no matter the direction of the trend either upwards or downwards. Agilent Technologies stock price opened lower yesterday morning (US time) but shares overcame last bar’s high and closed higher gaining 0.86%. The initial uptrend lost speed towards the last hours of trading in the US stock market, but the volatility of 2 dollars during the day provided the necessary requirement for day traders to look for profitable trades.

I began monitoring the US stock market a couple of moments after the open and used the stock screener the Interactive Brokers’ software provides. I normally sort the US stocks by most % gain since open then trading and only watch stocks with more than 1M shares volume. One of the stocks that quickly traded millions of shares yesterday and showed an uptrend right from the start was Agilent Technologies. I missed a great opportunity for day trading 15 minutes after market’s open, when the price gained 1 dollar in just 4 minutes! That was an almost perfect situation of day trading stocks as the move included only green climbing candlesticks! Fortunately that was not the end of the uptrend and I quickly entered a long trade when the stock retraced to $38.10 and formed a bullish resume pattern.

The uptrend that followed in the next minutes didn’t have a single candlestick with a lower low than the previous candlestick and when that occurred I traded out winning about 45 cents per share. My stop loss was set right below the last support level at $38 and I was determined to lose no more than $70-80 on this day trade. Given the fact my final profit was about 3 times that amount, I consider this trade one of my most successful ones. In the end of my day trading activity that lasted about an hour, my profit and loss statement showed a profitable day.

Interactive Brokers profit and loss statement