i've been using candlestick charts with multiple time frames, moving averages volume, rsi, and support and resistance, while keeping an eye on the general market and vix for broader market trends to determine if I should be looking for short or long positions. I've also been keeping to securities that I follow regularly rather than using a screener or anything like that Then its just about waiting for the indicators to align into what displays the right criteria. Nothing fancy or compex
ha! well come on now, its all simple stuff. Sure when listed it seems like quite a collection but laid out over a couple charts on a computer screen its simple simple stuff. I know you know what I mean. ps. I spoke with CY group and they seem to be pretty reasonable. Any experience with them? Do they seem to match up with the sort of thing I'm looking for?
When I was in college, I took the maximum amount of student loan money I was offered, which gave me, coincidentally, $5000 per year in excess cash for living expenses. I did that at least three times, and always lost the money in trading, and fast at that. The more leverage I used, the sooner I lost all my money. My leveraged stock account lasted about 3 months before I lost all the money in it (after tripling it, by the way). Then I switched to futures and traded about 3 ES contracts in my 5K account! My hubris knew no bounds. I made a 50% return on my investment on my first day of trading, and then lost all my money the next day! I survived a little longer in FX trading, but lost my shirt in the end. Some 10 years later I got back into trading and was more successful. I had 20K to start with, and having that much made it a little easier to trade sensibly. My strategy was to trade ETFs as a day and swing trader (of course, I had to build my account up to 25K before I could really get into day-trading), and to never cut my losses. That goes against all the conventional wisdom, of course, but I was just worried about death by paper cuts. I didn't want to draw my account down to nothing, one responsible, controlled loss at a time. Thus, I was a day-trader when right, a buy-and hold investor when wrong. This would only work if no leverage is used and the investment vehicle is a diversified portfolio of ETFs or 30 or so really solid stocks. This strategy has worked for me thus far. It's the only one that has. The moral is to avoid leverage like the plague, trade quality, investment grade securities, and don't take losses indiscriminately. Take it for what it's worth, and good luck to you!