Benzinga | Oct 19, 2020 12:03PM EDT

Looking For Last Week's Momentum To Carry Through The Rest Of October

We're a little over halfway through October and the market has been behaving pretty reliably through what is traditionally a fairly volatile month. While the broad market seems to be in a holding position until the U.S. presidential election on November 3, the stocks I traded through last week saw a good amount of momentum after a brief period of choppiness on Monday and Tuesday.

Those initial days of last week were mostly flat for my trading account, though Monday started off rocky with sizable losses in Monday's leading gap stocks, Medley Management Inc. (NASDAQ:MDLY) and Lizhi Inc. (NASDAQ:LIZI). I took several shots at both of them at pretty reasonable share size. Unfortunately, I got in just as they were squeezing up before the charts broke down before reaching a halt. In particular, MDLY flushed out completely and I only barely got out before it was halted on the way down.

I ultimately finished Monday in the green after digging out of a fairly deep -$20,000 hole. Not a good way to start the week.

Tuesday's morning watchlist was marginally more placid, starting off with a $6,000 profit in J.Jill, Inc. (NYSE:JILL) and a $4,600 win in PEDEVCO Corp. (NYSE:PED). Unfortunately, I gave up most of that in Medigus Ltd. (NASDAQ:MDGS) after the bell rang.

It wasn't until Wednesday that momentum started picking up and I was able to focus in on one or two stocks each day. On Wednesday it was Medalist Diversified REIT, Inc. (NASDAQ:MDRR) while Thursday saw a strong move at the opening bell in Staffing 360 Solutions, Inc. (NASDAQ:STAF). Finally, I was able to tag up on the big move in Hertz Global Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:HTZ) in Friday's premarket and then catch Kaixin Auto Holdings (NASDAQ:KXIN) after it came out of a halt.

Those final three days accounted for pretty much all of my profits through last week, about $115,000 between my main trading account and my IRA account.

The results are an encouraging sign for the stocks I tend to focus on, since those first two days were murder on my accuracy. I'm hopeful this week will see more of the follow-through that the back half of last week had, but I'm still going to keep my max share size reasonable in case the market starts to waver in its support.