I don't understand this. Why was today a bad day to trade equity indices? How many times have we seen this pattern? HOW MANY BLOODY TIMES!?!?! Down in the morning, up through the rest of day in RTH. Almost the 10:30 reversal, but a bit early today. To the tune of a TWO HUNDRED POINT RANGE from nadir to zenith (in the NQ, the NAS doesn't show it as well)! The hell is wrong with you people! OMFG driving me nuts.
My charts are volume based. So we suffer under such situation. Yesterday those who used hourly chart would be pleased. However their stop must be very wide Am I going back to time based chart? Hell no. We can't profit from all market situation
Ken: Good morning. That seems like an arbitrary measure. What if you changed your thought process to selling strength into resistance rather than selling weakness? One of the issues a lot of people have is becoming memorized by current price action -- for instance, assuming that weakness will continue so they jump into "short" positions thinking that the market is rolling over rather than looking at the weakness as a potential buying opportunity.
Good point, especially now with so many reversals and mean reversion price action in current markets. To mitigate, I'm going to test wider lod stops for intraday swings and less scalping. Look at yesterday's WIMI chart, I called it long at 7.3, holding til 4 would've been a big win, vs scalping. I feel like a dumbass for not trading my alert. Moving forward I will try to trade all my alerts. Sigh. I'm much better at squawks, calling out trade alerts for others, than I am in my own trading, many days. I need to fix that... ideas?
@deaddog is right: You sound like an addict who keeps a needle under the pillow "just in case." Just learn to short real stocks and learn to short the SPY or the Q's. But you also need to realize that you have an addiction to the short side. You find yourself unable to hold a high probability long position for more than a scalp and you have no problem dying the death of a thousand cuts shorting the market as it runs relentlessly higher. That needs to be fixed, Ken. Do you even realize your short bias? Now, are you willing to waste your whole life for the five or six days a year that you might make a decent profit on one or two pieces of garbage when you could could trade a list of the market leaders that can move 5 to 150 points in a day? Does that make any sense to you? If you need leverage, then swing options. But you should not need leverage if you trade the right list. AMZN has a 60 day average daily range (ADR) of 65 points, and an average 5 day ADR of 100 points. Facebook has an 60 day ADR of almost 7 points, and a 5 day ADR of more than 8.5 points. Compare to your TZA with a 60 day ADR of less than 2.5 points, and a 5 day ATR of around 1.5 points. TNA has a lower 60 day ADR at 2 points and a 5 day ADR of just less than 2 points. You are trading garbage and eating scraps. I'm telling you that with the right list you can start with odd lots and make significant profits. Let's face it, a small account should be trading 1 to 10 shares of TSLA and AMZN at the most anyway. You can work it up to 100 shares on the others. You are trading garbage and your attachment to garbage has become a bias in and of itself and it is keeping you poor as a trader. Furthermore, you have what is obvious to anyone reading your posts a definite short bias. This is America, Ken! Even during bear markets more than half the day trade profits are going to be on the long side! Trade this list: AAPL AMZN FB NFLX NVDA TSLA And then pick the one or two best candidates from a gapper/%Gain scanner. For example, yesterday I traded NFLX and TSLA from the above list, and I traded MATX and WIMI off my scanner. As a matter of fact, NFLX was on my scanner also. I also run a constant scan of my FAANNG watch list throughout the day that alerts to new highs of day on any stocks on my list. The TSLA trade came off of that breakout scanner. I can't show a screen shot of that scanner as it only runs during market hours. Get yourself a good scanner that scans for both price action and news. Trade the gappers and big % gainers moving with a catalyst and leave the garbage and unsupported pump and dumps alone. I use scanz.com, which used to be known as Equity Feed. I pay $164/month because I also trade OTC's as well, but it would be $149 if you just trade listed stocks. Charts: Level 2 with market maker activity: You'll also be able to have information on share structure, short interest, news, and so much more at your finger tips. If you know Once you start trading real common stocks you'll cure yourself of that desire to be a garbage man. And then you will really bring your $197/month subscribers something of real value. Don't get me wrong, I do not doubt you know a thing or two and I am sure that at least some of your subs learn a thing or two from you. But for $197/month, my perception is you should be offering a lot more than you likely are. Again, I am trying to help, and I am not trying to troll you at all. I wish everyone who lives and breathes as much success as life and wits allow. One more tip is this: Get yourself a copy of Rollo Tape's (Richard Wyckoff's) Studies in Tape Reading. It sometimes floats itself around the internet as The Day Trader's Bible. It is old, and much of the information may seem dated. But it really is not. The main difference is we now have better and faster information than he did, and instead of watching Union Pacific and Reading, St. Paul's and Smelters, Bethlehem Steel and Anaconda Copper, we are now watching Facebook and Amazon, Apple and Netflix and Google and NVDA (I also keep LRCX in to my own list because, to my mind, chip stocks are the new steel companies). And I'll take level 2 with market maker information with depth over a delayed scrolling ticker tape machine all day, everyday, my whole life long. So while the technology available to Wyckoff is far more primitive than we have today, the techniques are the same.
Hi - many thanks for one of the best thought-out posts I've seen in my life. Those ADR comparisons are eye-openers. And brilliant, thx. I'll start intraday swing trading those tickers starting next week -- I appreciate and agree with you. fwiw historically I do mainly trade momentum breakout stocks (eg I remember swing trading NFLX sub-100, and recently trading MGM PENN off March lows) and those are mainly what I cover in my chatroom, like my long @ 7.3 MIMI alert yesterday for subs. Here at et though I've mostly discussed inverses lately. right re short bias recently, will fix Great scanning tips & right re tape reading book, I like ch. 2 best if it's the one I'm thinking about, from the 60s... good read. Agree w/tip re tape best used at hod breakouts.