A Soft Gap Fill - $KMI

Kinder Morgan ($KMI) was gaping up big this morning and was up over 20 percent in the pre-market on news that it was consolidating its oil-and-gas pipeline business into a single company. While I expected there would be some profit taking on the open, I didn't really expect to see the "soft" gap fill that we saw during the first hour of trading ("soft gap fill" meaning the stock doesn't fill the entire gap but rather pulls into recent support). If you were aggressive, you could have shorted it on the open below pre-market support at $42. I passed on the short, as I was not only unsure of the potential on the downside but I was also watching some other things as well.

I eventually bought some around 10:45am as the stock pulled into $38, which had been resistance (now support, or should) about 3 weeks ago. I thought there was a pretty good chance it would drop out below $38, so I put out a bid @ $37.82 to nibble on some and planned on hitting it out below $37.40. I added some around 11am after the $38 bid held. I scaled out of some into $39 and $39.50 (which was right around VWAP). Then, a little before noon, I sent out a tweet on StockTwits noting that KMI had finally crossed above VWAP after spending the entire morning below it and that I was looking to add on a consolidation above intraday VWAP. When a stock spends a significant amount of time below VWAP and breaks above VWAP, that's a bullish sign cc @MikeBellafiore

I stuck to my plan and added, but was eventually stopped out of my added shares and got flat after it broke back below VWAP, but still for a pretty nice profit. FYI, had I not been stopped out, I was planning on selling some into $41 and would have gotten flat into $42 (had been pre-market support).

KMI, daily chart showing $38 level

KMI, 5min chart with trade management

Once quick thing I wanted to point out. For my intraday trading, the only "indicators" I use are price, volume, and VWAP. For my swing trades (longer time frame), I have some moving averages plotted, but I don't use them as specific levels but instead use them as a quick visual reference of a stock's current trend. My intraday trading has much more to do with support and resistance levels (longer-term charts as well as intraday levels) than anything else. I don't like to clutter my charts with a plethora of indicators, especially when looking at shorter time frames. That's just me though.

Anyways, thanks for reading.

Please let me know if you have any questions or comments below.

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