When shorting penny stocks, it’s so key to wait for these afternoon fades and ideally the taking out of the morning lows, remember this!
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An afternoon fade is one of a penny stock trader’s best friends when short selling penny stocks. It is one of my favorite short selling patterns because it’s VERY predictable.

So lets get to the basics: What is an afternoon fade? An afternoon fade is when a penny stock gradually (sometimes sharply) comes down off its highs of the day and keeps making lower lows for the day. Keep in mind we’re only looking for afternoon fades in penny stocks that are hyped, manipulated to 75%-300% gains in 1-10 trading days.

What happens is during the morning hours of trading there’s a ton a volume and volatility in these types of penny stocks because of news, hype, promoting, message board pumping, etc. Then what happens is by the afternoon time everything kind of calms down from the morning spikes and all that craziness and these particular penny stocks start trending gradually downwards because the momentum drains out and volume is lighter from that in the morning. A key to spotting an afternoon fade is when your targeted hyped penny stock begins to make intraday lower-lows OR goes below the morning lows – during the afternoon. Here’s a chart diagram that shows a picture perfect afternoon fade (from yesterday actually).

Afternoon fades are very predictable pattern to short because there usually just isn’t enough volume to turn up a penny stock turning downwards..traders just kind of go with the flow. Because of this its less risky because of the non-volatile factor. For you beginners just getting into or wanting to get into shorting penny stocks, I suggest you try to short these types of patterns first because it’s less risky. Then once you get your feet wet you can began to short this amazing pattern.

So I brought up my watch list of potential swine flu penny stocks and thought of my game plan. It was pretty simple: I figured that I would buy the penny stock that was up the least amount of % in the watch list. Make’s sense right? Well the lucky winner was penny stock NNVC.OB. To make things even better, this company released a PR that same morning that specifically mentioned “swine flu” in it. Now there was 2 important reasons why I knew this stock could really potentially make me some money.

1) This stock was only up 30% pre-market according to the bid/ask (remember penny stocks trading on the OTCBB exchange don’t have pre-market buying/selling BUT they do print the bid/ask before the market opens –effectively the same thing except no shares are actually trading hands during this time). Other penny stocks were up over 100%+, so I figured that NNVC definitely had room to run especially considering it was already way behind compared to other penny stocks in its sector.

2) The PR they released that morning before the market open specifically mentioned “Swine Flu” in it. Now this was huge because none of the Biotech swine flu stocks, even those that were up 100%+, had a PR that mentioned “swine flu”.

As the market opened I put in my order for 3350 shares @ 1.04. I immediately got 1800 shares filled but then this thing took off skipping over the rest of my shares. Unfortunately I got the rest of my shares filled at 1.12 thus giving me an average of 3350 shares at 1.08. You gotta be quick!

Ended up going to 1.25 before some profit taking took place, causing it to drop down…then seeing that the other biotech penny stocks were dropping I got scared and sold my shares at 1.18. Shoulda sold some at 1.25 as I was too greedy and wanted more, but on the same token I’m glad I got scared and sold at 1.18 because you can see in the chart below where it closed..Solid $335 profit, though.

Now lets head on to yesterday (Tuesday) when in my premarket watchlist I said that DDRX was my top potential short. This penny stock opened up green but stalled for the first 10 minutes of the open. I knew that it might be the turning point for this sucker to go red on the day. Sure enough 5 minutes later the stock went into negative aka showed the weakness I wanted for this to make it a great short. I have never seen a penny stock drop so fast, I literally went to my brokerage to enter the short order and this thing had already dropped 7%. I finally got my order filled for 476 shares short @ 7.34. Wounded up going down to 7.00 in the next 5 minutes but I wanted more. At this point it was just going to be toughing out a short squeeze that I figured wouldn’t go too far considering the stock was now on our side (the short seller’s). I went to math class around 2 to take a test, that I think I made a 100 on, wooohoooo! Came back and planned on selling this sucker by the close because I just didn’t like the spread between the bid/ask and the sideways price action all coupled around the fact that this was a earnings play that may not give me fast negative move like I want. I wound up covering my shares at 3.85 for a cool $227 off of a perfect green-to-red move that I fully detail in my FREE eBook. I really think this penny stock would be a good hold for a week or two because of the total unsustainable run up this penny stock has gotten. But the patience that I have (An 18 year old) just isn’t there yet!

Well, FRZ developed a pattern on the 5-min chart that is known as a Triple Top Revsersal and it is one of the most predictable patterns to short. 9 times outta 10 the penny stock will tank when this pattern develops. The pattern sets up when a penny stock makes 3 equal(or close to equal) highs which is followed by a break in support. Pretty simple to understand, right? Here’s an illustration of FRZ yesterday (too bad I was in class and couldn’t short it) — YET another reason trading penny stocks is better than class! That’d be a good topic to blog about wouldn’t it?

This really is one of the best patterns for shorting penny stocks, and for good reason cause it works! The pattern is just like the Double Top explained in my FREE eBook, but instead of forming 2 “tops” i.e equal(or close to equal) highs, it forms 3. Consider this: The more a penny stock bounces off a specfic price point the more significant that price point becomes. Which is why the Triple Top Reversal is soooo much better than the Double Top, and more reliable..not to mention predictable…. and that’s all we want down here in the “gutter”

I’m planning on doing a whole series of charting 101 stuff, including how I set up my charts and more chart patterns, etc. in the next few weeks let me know if thats a good idea.

As I pointed out early this morning before the market opened in my penny stocks to watch, SCON was up 150%+ on an obvious hyped/manipulated run because there were no PR’s hitting the wires whatsoever on this penny stock. Look at this chart and tell me this is not a screaming short. Penny stocks just can’t keep going up and up and this one was no different. It went up tooo much tooo fast so the game plan for the morning, yes game plan (you should all have one as I pointed out in THIS post) was to watch for any weakness and short the weakness. At the market open we got a slight gap-up in this penny stock but the postive run up only lasted 5 minutes..after that it was weakness as sellers came into the stock at full speed. About 9:50am SCON went negative on the day – this was the weakness I was looking for. Now, I didn’t get a good entry price as it was dropping so quick and the bid/ask was going crazy but I wound up getting my 1290 shares short @ 2.71. From there it was a classic death spiral of a hyped penny stock on green-to-red price action. Think about it: If I was a stock promoter/pumper and I had a huge long positon in a stock that has gone up 2 consecutive days over 150% and on the 3rd day it opens up and things are looking great then all the sudden it goes negative/red on the day (something it hasn’t done in days) panic sets in and everyone sells which is why green-to-red works so well when shorting penny stocks. I explain this pattern further and how to short these penny stocks in my FREE eBook that if you haven’t already gotten, you should!