Honestly I cant tell you what exactly made me feel the way I did about the market this morning, it was basically a combination of things that made me feel like I needed to be more conservative and tighten my trading up. It comes with time. You will build up intuition and your mind and body will tell you when you need to size down or size up.
Think of pivot points as the BOSS during the daytrade sessions. That way you have a roadmap to Grannys house. Use the moving average crosses like getting on the turnpike, get on, set the cruise and enjoy the ride. The exit ramp is determined by a recross in the opposite direction. The rest areas are the pivot points support and resist lines, pull in and take a break, get some coffee maybe a couple donuts and review the trips roadmap, if all looks good continue on the trip when the traffic stream is flowing along nice and smooth. If you get lost, and the GPS of your brain is confussed call it a day when the Holiday Inn is your STOP. Happy Trails to you..... See, this game is not so hard now is it? Your TOLLS are the commissions you must pay to enter the FREEWAY.....
Do you use a scanner to show you what stocks to trade or do you trade the same stocks day in and day out? Thanks.
I have a core list that I trade everyday, and I also have a filter up to find new things worth trading.
What moving average are you using? 10 day? 20 day? Does entering and exiting positions really work based off watching the stock cross a short term moving average?
The moving avg i use is for short time frame in the futures, not stocks. But stock traders use them also. I never daytraded stocks, just position traded them, so in a nutshell i never used pivot points, moving averages for those. In the futures (ES, ER2) on a 5 minute chart i use the 4, 9, 19 period crosses. If i am to take a moving avg cross as my main signal to enter a particular trade, i will use the 4 crossing the 9, then that is also the signal to hit the STOP if it recrosses. The cross is my MAIN signal to PAY ATTENTION even if i do not take the signal, as an example if it looks like the price is BETWEEN a pivot support area and a pivot resist area i will not take the signal, chances are we will be in a sideways range and that is the worst case to use crosses, the dreaded WHIPSAWS... So to avoid those whipsaws, that is where you wait for what looks like some strength of a breakout past a resist PP (pivot point) or vice versa on weakness. My trading has become more signal oriented as time moved on, but it is still subjective in many ways, i assume always will be. PS, if trading stocks longer term adjust the mov avg to the time frame you are using. I believe the main moving averages for stock funds in general arer something like the 20 day, 50 day, 200 day. Could be wrong ....
All the major sectors, steels, energy and particularly homebuilders have been making me a nice chunk of change by 12pm for the last 2 weeks. You cannot even trade those guys for 5-10 cents, so if dimes & nickels is what you look for, you're looking in all the wrong places. If you're having some problems now, wait till earnings season is over. It's gonna make the bad days of this season look like the good old days.