Hi ET, As some of you guys know by now, I'm back to Corporate America. So I mostly do swing trading(occasionally position trading). However, I want to add day trading back into the mix given the volatility of nowadays. Case in point, this week we see 100s of points more in the index futures in a short window of time. So I'm planning to combine both. The swing trading to express my longer term views. The day trading is just for the 1 hour I have in the morning before work. The hard part is not to let my longer term view influenced my short term day trading in and out in a few minutes. I might be short long term but intraday there's still a bounce of a 100+ pts. Or I could long long term but short term it could still fall and profitable to short. What you think of this plan? The hard part is to separate my long term view with my short term daytrading signals/chart patterns. Have anyone done this successfully?
Good question. I started trading before computer was around. I can't mix swing and day trading because it is like serving 2 masters. Now I focus only on day trading. Well. Really up to individual.
And what will you do when your 1-second or 1-minute trade goes to 1-hour? Two hours? Maxinger's phrase comes to mind: "...like serving 2 masters." There are lots of ways to do trade a rules-based system, and if you can develop one for that first hour you have, and then key up necessary exits (for example, a series of OCOs bracketing an existing (1-hour AM) position), you *could* put on a position even as you're heading out the door, and know that your rules will take you out..... At IB, setting up a sub-account is pretty easy, and I'd want to segregate my portfolio page, my graphs/settings trades/settings, etc, to keep an eagle eye on things. (And to know what part of my soul gets the overnight self-flagellation should things go awry. )
I would consider entering a oco order using a target and stop loss. one cancels the other order. that way your day trade can give you a bigger profit or small loss. when you get to work you can check and raise your stop loss. most brokers now allow trading off your cell phone and other devices. so off in the privacy of the bathroom you can check on things. you can get live charts and order entry on cell phones today. no need to sit home all day any more.
I have IB. What is a sub-account? You can take your account and separate into 2. One for day trading. The other for swing trading?
With OCO, you can set a target and an exit. But can it trail too? Or that's just a plain trailing order? I have IB on my mobile phone. So in theory I could trade in my privacy. I feel like I'm missing out on the huge intraday moves and volatility.
with NINJA TRADER you can do follow up behind the market and also use sophisticated self programmed trading order entry the way you like. however. I have no experience with that. you would have to talk to ninja trader to find out what they can do for you. AMP trading has over 40 different softwares to do what you want. you could talk to them and find out what works for what you want. I just do my thing from home. so do not have this problem. But what we are talking about here everyone is working to develop answers right now. it is out or coming out soon. getting this type thing developed is very competitive today. all the brokers want it. you might try places like TOS. they have sophisticated software mostly for stocks and especially for options. but they do futures. but you have to research these things. I am not the best guy to get good advice from. talk to some brokers. it is out there. i know that. There is now cloud based trading. so you could have big software up in the cloud to do your orders and use the phone to connect. I dont do any of this top of the line solutions so I only know about rumors of things. good luck on research get back to ET and let everyone know what you learn. a lot of people here are interested in how to do this.
my original thought in my earlier posting was that one could simple place the order get to work and check the market and change things throughout the day. moving the buys and sells yourself. but of course that requires you to monitor the market. I used to do that back in 1960's phoned my broker and checked prices and adjusted orders. no big deal. now of course one does not talk to the broker although you can do that. but one can change things electronically on the cell phone. with charts on the cell phone. let everyone know what systems look good. it is going to be different solutions for different people. it depends on what the person wants.
AFAIK with AMP, a sub account is just an account under same ownership, with a separate account balance, as you can't have two primary accounts under the same entity. So yes, you could have 25K in an account you consider swing, and 25K in an account you consider day. This is something I wanted to try earlier this year, but got waylayed and could not follow through with. With NinjaT software, yeah, you can program an OCO with a simple ATM to set-up a trailing-stop. The psychology behind the reasons why mixing swing and day trading in the same mind at the same time is extremely difficult to explain. I experienced it just yesterday, AGAIN, and I missed out on opportunity because of the conflict in my head.
I tried doing something similar. I was trying to daytrade my way into a swing position. I ended up doing poor job day trading as I would simply categorize loosing trades as a sub-par swing trade entry I was over trading. Your results maybe different of course.