I've been trading QCOM intraday on and off for about the past month, specifically trying to focus on technical patterns.  It's been frustrating, although I feel like I'm beginning to understand what my biggest problem is:  not trading the trend.  I'm always trying to trade a reversal, or a break of the trend.  And that's where I usually get burned.  I've had other sticking points as well, like cutting my winners short and letting my losers run, but I'm working on those.  But, I keep telling myself, the trend is my friend.  Maybe one of these days it will stick.

On that note, when discussing with a friend of mine some investment ideas for 2007, he mentioned IGT to me.  I looked at the chart, and put an alert for when it reached closer to it's all time high.  It hit that high and broke through it yesterday.  And looking at the weekly chart, it has a very strong upward trend going for at least a year, if not more.

So I decided to buy.  This is my first position trade based on technical analysis.  I bought shares this morning at 47.30 and set my stop at 41.80 (a little below resistance in the 42 range and just below a break in the trend line).  That gives me a 12% stop, so with a 3-1 risk to reward ratio, I'm looking at a price target of about 65.

The company announces earnings next week on 1/18.  Depending on movement up until the announcement, I may decide to sell my shares beforehand.