Short-Term Swing Ideas: Week of August 29

Five ideas are open, one is closed, and on a hypothetical $100K account risking 1% per trade, the group is up $1,530 this week.

Six short-term swing ideas have been live across four posts: LLY, PEP, and CVNA from August 12, plus V, MA, and MRK from August 15. This week Visa finally cleared its trigger, Merck cooled off after its target hit, and nothing changed the CVNA verdict from last week. That is four weeks of the same six levels, which is the entire point of running a scoreboard instead of a highlight reel.

The scoreboard

LLY: Still open, cooling off. Friday close $1,174.61 (-0.13%), pulling back from last week’s breakout confirmation. Stop $1,103.51. First target $1,400, stretch $2,000. Still comfortably above the $1,103.51 stop and the $1,250 level that triggered the idea.

PEP: Still open, holding the range. Friday close $141.07 (+0.97%). Stop $133.00. First target $148.00, about $6.93 away. Stretch $160.75.

V: Triggered this week. Friday close $381.60 (+0.51%), confirming the close above the $375.71 trigger with room to spare. Stop $357.69, target $421.62.

MA: Still open, extending. Friday close $595.30 (+0.60%), extending above last week’s $569.29 breakout confirmation. Stop $554.91, target $601.77 (all-time high), about $6.47 away.

MRK: First target banked, runner cooling. Friday close $148.35 (-0.80%), pulling back from the $154.49 all-time high printed August 21. First target $149.84 was already cleared last week. Original stop $125.92, runner target $207.

CVNA: Still invalidated. No change from last week’s call. The $74.56 reclaim failed to hold and the idea is closed.

The scorecard: a hypothetical $100K account at 1% risk per idea

This is not a real account. It is a simulation, and the entire point of running it is to show what disciplined position sizing actually looks like in dollars instead of percentages. The rules: a $100,000 account, 1% risk per idea ($1,000), position size set by dividing that $1,000 by the per-share distance between entry and stop, and no size increase after a trade is already working. Entries are the confirmed breakout/reclaim closes documented in each original post and week-1 update, not a hypothetical best fill.

Ticker	Entry	Stop	Shares (1% risk)	Current / Exit	Simulated P&L	Status
LLY	$1,255.40	$1,103.51	6.58	$1,174.61	−$531.90	Open
PEP	$140.62	$133.00	131.23	$141.07	+$59.06	Open
V	$375.71	$357.69	55.49	$381.60	+$326.86	Open
MA	$580.63	$554.91	38.88	$595.30	+$570.37	Open
MRK	$135.84	$125.92 → $135.84 (BE)	100.81 (half banked)	$148.35	+$1,472.78	Half closed, half open
CVNA	$75.59	$60.12	64.64	$69.91 (exit)	−$367.16	Closed — invalidated

Total across all six ideas: +$1,530.01, or about 25.5% of the $6,000 in total capital risked across the six positions, and 1.53% of the full $100,000 account. That last number is the one that matters most. One idea getting invalidated (CVNA, -$367.16) and one idea drifting under its trigger cushion (LLY, -$531.90) barely dented an account that risked six separate ideas at once, because no single idea was ever sized to do real damage on its own.

The MRK line needs its own explanation, because it is the one idea where a decision actually had to be made instead of just watched. The first target at $149.84 was cleared on August 21’s close of $152.55. Taking half the position off there and trailing the stop on the remainder up to breakeven at the original $135.84 entry is the standard way to handle a hit first target with a runner still in play — lock in the win on half the size, and let the other half work with zero downside risk left on the table. That is a modeling choice, not a guarantee; if you actually held the full size past $149.84 without trimming, your own number looks different, which is exactly why the plan for handling a hit target has to be written before the trade, not during it.

Status: open, unchanged. A pullback from $1,255.40 to $1,174.61 is a give-back inside an already-triggered idea, not a new decision point. The stop stays at $1,103.51. $1,400 is still the first target, and there is nothing to do below the stop except hold the plan that was written before the breakout happened. Original idea: LLY (Eli Lilly) Short-Term Swing Trade Idea.

Status: open, working. PEP has done nothing dramatic since triggering on August 13, which continues to be the point — it is grinding toward $148.00 without threatening the $133.00 stop. Stretch target stays $160.75, first target stays $148.00. Original idea: PEP (PepsiCo) Short-Term Swing Trade Idea.

Status: triggered. V spent two full weeks camped under $375.71 before this week finally cleared it, closing $381.60 with room above the level instead of a marginal poke through it. The stop stays at $357.69 and the target stays $421.62, exactly as published in the original idea. Being patient for two weeks did not change the plan; it just delayed the entry until the level actually printed. Original idea: V (Visa) Short-Term Swing Trade Idea: The $422 Breakout.

Status: open, close to target. MA is the cleanest idea of the six right now — one trigger, one target, no stretch to get greedy about, and price is sitting about $6.47 from that single number. The stop stays $554.91 until $601.77 actually prints. Original idea: MA (Mastercard) Short-Term Swing Trade Idea: The $601 Breakout.

Status: first target banked, runner open. MRK ripped through $149.84 the week after a Merck-Moderna Phase 3 melanoma vaccine readout beat expectations, tagging a fresh all-time high of $154.49 on August 21 (Investing.com). Since then it has cooled to $148.35 after RBC Capital Markets downgraded the stock to Sector Perform on valuation, even while raising its price target to $150 (GuruFocus). That is a normal give-back after a 12%+ move, not a reason to abandon the runner toward $207. The original stop at $125.92 is the one still written in the initial post; whether you trail it to breakeven on a partial exit is a sizing decision, not a change to the thesis. Original idea: MRK (Merck) Short-Term Swing Trade Idea.

CVNA: no update, because there is nothing to update

CVNA closed back below the $74.56 reclaim level on August 21 and stayed there. The full stop at $60.12 was never touched, and it still does not need to be for this idea to stay closed — the thesis was the reclaim holding, and the reclaim already failed. There is no new price action this week that changes that call. Original idea: CVNA (Carvana) Short-Term Swing Trade Idea: The $97 Reclaim.

The lesson this week actually taught

V is the lesson worth sitting with. Two full weeks of watching a level from four dollars away, doing nothing, and then getting paid for the patience the moment it actually printed. That is a boring sentence and also the entire skill. The idea did not get better while it waited and it did not get worse; the level was the level the whole time, and the only thing that changed this week is that price finally showed up.

The $1,530 scorecard number is the other half of the lesson. That gain came from five different ideas moving in five different ways — one big winner still running (MRK), two smaller winners grinding (PEP, V), one extending nicely (MA), one pulling back but intact (LLY), and one closed loser (CVNA) that cost less than half of one winning idea’s gain. No single trade made the week and no single trade broke it, because 1% risk per idea means no single trade is allowed to do either. That is not luck. That is what position sizing is actually for.

If your real account does not have a written rule for how much you risk per idea before you take it, that is the gap this scorecard is quietly pointing at. The Risk Management Mastery series is where to fix that before next week’s numbers post.

Takeaway: V triggered. MA is close. PEP keeps grinding. LLY pulled back but held. MRK banked half and is running the rest. CVNA stays closed. On a simulated $100K account risking 1% per idea, that mix nets +$1,530.01 this week — proof that a diversified set of small, defined risks can be net positive even when one of them is dead wrong. This update is a journal entry, not a new thesis. Next week we score the same levels again.

References

1. Merck stock just backed off all-time highs; should you load up? – Investing.com
2. MRK Looks 25.5% Overvalued on GF Value as Dividend Sustainability Faces Scrutiny – GuruFocus
3. Merck stock hits all-time high at 153.53 USD – Investing.com
4. LLY (Eli Lilly) Short-Term Swing Trade Idea – TRDR Zone
5. PEP (PepsiCo) Short-Term Swing Trade Idea – TRDR Zone
6. CVNA (Carvana) Short-Term Swing Trade Idea: The $97 Reclaim – TRDR Zone
7. V (Visa) Short-Term Swing Trade Idea: The $422 Breakout – TRDR Zone
8. MA (Mastercard) Short-Term Swing Trade Idea: The $601 Breakout – TRDR Zone
9. MRK (Merck) Short-Term Swing Trade Idea – TRDR Zone
10. Risk Management Mastery series – TRDR Zone