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How to Make $1,150 With Nvidia and QQQ With Low Risk
An educational piece on intra-day trades
On Tuesday July 25, we made two long trades, one on Nvidia (NVDA) and one on the QQQ ETF (QQQ).
Both approaches were incredibly simple and both approaches ended up giving us a great return on the day.
I am happy for some of our subscribers who nailed the trade, but I am bummed for those that missed it! For those that did, I wanted to break it down:
How We Traded Nvidia Stock +$900
I am particularly happy with Nvidia, because it paid out quickly and the trade worked almost instantly (those are the best). This was the setup we sent out:
The NVDA setup from 7/25
Basically, we were looking for a daily-up rotation after a nice, tight doji close on the $440 breakout level and the gap-fill. We got it, with a risk of about $2.
Originally, our risk was wider, but because it moved so quickly in our favor, traders could quickly move their stop to either the LOD (at $449) or even all the way up to break-even.
Here’s how it played out:
NVDA 5 min chart from 7/25
The trade was pretty simple. We went daily-up over $451 (our entry). Because it moved to $455-56 so quickly, traders could move their stops up too, but it didn’t take long for us to get to $460.
At that point, it’s “trader’s choice” on how to proceed.
You could take off the whole position for +$9 a share — that’s $900 profit on a simple 100 share position — or traders could take off ½ the position and move to a break-even stop, allowing them to benefit from more potential upside against a “risk-free” stop.
FWIW, either approach was acceptable and bulls got another chance later in the day to dump more of the position above $461 if they desired.
The risk here was a slightly different with MSFT and GOOGL reported earnings after the close, but let’s not forget, we’re buying the upside rotation in what has been this year’s strongest stock.
How We Traded QQQ Stock +$250
Here’s the setup from our daily game plan:
The setup was super simple: Daily-up over $377.60.
A move over that level sparked a long position. It helped that our NVDA position was the first to go green, lending a bit of confidence that the Qs would be able to hang tough.
Here’s how it played out:
QQQ 15-min Chart
The QQQ went daily-up in the opening 15 minutes, but back-tested this level about an hour later, where it aligned with the 10-ema on the 15-min chart. Together, this was enough to act as support.
With low trading volume on the day and no one wanting to get overly short ahead of the MSFT and GOOGL print after the close, the QQQ had a recipe for higher prices.
Eventually, that led to the QQQ hitting our $380 target, good for a profit of ~$2.50 a share. On 100 shares, that’s a $250 profit for less than a day’s work.
Now I will be honest, I did not exit the whole position at $380, as I did hold onto about 1/3 of my position to see if we could get more upside out of it. But because of earnings later in the day, I did want to exit a majority of it going into the close.
The Takeaway
My hope is that traders can read breakdowns like this and get a better grasp of some strong intraday trading setups. These types of setups have relatively low risk, they’re simple and they can lead to really attractive gains.
The R/R on these are very attractive too.
On the QQQ, we had about a 4:1 setup. On NVDA, it was better than 5:1, (that’s assuming we use the LOD as our stop vs. our first upside target).
Generally, 3:1 is pretty darn good.
These setups don’t work everyday and the environment has to be right. But because it was one of the only ones we were watching — particularly the NVDA one — it was a quick and easy way to make some good coin.
Hope this helps — Happy trading!