Swing trading strategy – 9% gain on a 2-week hold with Alexion Pharmaceuticals ($ALXN)

We recently bought Alexion Pharmaceuticals ($ALXN) in our Wagner Daily ETF and stock newsletter, and this post is an educational walk-through of the technical setup and subsequent trade management. We’ll start by taking a look at the daily chart as it appeared prior to our March 12 buy entry:

A tight consolidation near the highs, holding above the 20-day exponential moving average, put the setup on our radar as a potential Relative Strength Breakout play. On March 12 (one day later), newsletter subscribers were alerted to our breakout entry into ALXN when the price traded through our trigger price, above the $86.00 level. That day, the strong closing price and volume action confirmed the breakout:

After a few days of consolidation, ALXN followed through to the upside on March 21, allowing us to sell the position into strength and lock in a healthy 9% gain on a 2-week hold. We had an initial risk of about 4% on the trade, so we achieved a solid 2 to 1 reward to risk ratio:

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