Here is a possible short trading opportunity for tomorrow and next week - CCRT at $36.5. (1) On the hourly chart, looks like it had a volume change yesterday, today it broke the uptrend channel: (2) On the daily chart, it is on the verge to break the uptrend channel with a double top:
Posting some trading advices from the books I read, so keep me alert. This is from Dr. Alexlander's Come to my Trading Room: THE MATURE TRADER Successful traders are sharp, curious, and unassuming people. Most have been through losing periods. They graduated from the school of hard knocks, and that experience helped smooth their rough edges. Successful traders are self-assured but never arrogant. People who survive in the markets remain alert. They trust their skills and trading methods, but keep their eyes and ears open for new developments. Confident and attentive, calm and flexible, successful traders are fun to be with. Successful traders are often unconventional people, and some are very eccentric. When they mix with others, they often break social rules. The markets are set up for the majority to lose money, and a small group of winners marches to a different drummer, in and out of the markets. Markets consist of huge crowds of people watching the same trading vehicles, mesmerized by upticks and downticks. Think of a crowd at a concert or in a movie theater. When the show begins, the crowd gets emotionally in gear and develops an amorphous but powerful mass mind, laughing or weeping together. A mass mind also emerges in the markets, only here it is more malignant. Instead of laughing or weeping, the crowd seeks each trader¡¯s private psychological weakness and hits him in that spot. Markets seduce greedy traders into buying positions that are too large for their accounts and then destroy them with a reaction they cannot afford to sit out. They shake fearful traders out of winning trades with brief countertrend spikes before embarking on runaway moves. Lazy traders are the favorite victims of the market, which keeps throwing new tricks at the unprepared. Whatever your psychological flaws and fears, whatever your inner demons, whatever your hidden weaknesses and obsessions, the market will seek them out, find them, and use them against you, like a skilled wrestler uses his opponent¡¯s own weight to toss him to the ground. Successful traders have outgrown or overcome their inner demons. Instead of being tossed by the markets, they maintain their own balance and scan for chinks in the crowd¡¯s armor, so that they can toss the market for a change. They may appear eccentric, but when it comes to trading they are much healthier than the crowd. Being a trader is a journey of self-discovery. Trade long enough, and you will face all your psychological handicaps¡ªanxiety, greed, fear, anger, and sloth. Remember, you¡¯re not in the markets for psychotherapy; self-discovery is a byproduct, not the goal of trading. The primary goal of a successful trader is to accumulate equity. Healthy trading boils down to two questions you need to ask in every trade: ¡°What is my profit target?¡± and ¡°How will I protect my capital?¡± A good trader accepts full responsibility for the outcome of every trade. You cannot blame others for taking your money. You have to improve your trading plans and methods of money management. It will take time, and it will take discipline. Discipline A friend of mine used to have a dog-training business. Occasionally a prospective client would call her and say, ¡°I want to train my dog to come when called, but I do not want to train it to sit or lie down.¡± And she¡¯d answer, ¡°Training a dog to come off-leash is one of the hardest things to teach; you must do a lot of obedience training first. What you¡¯re saying sounds like, ¡®I want my dog be a neurosurgeon, but I do not want it to go to high school.¡¯¡± Many new traders expect to sit in front of their screens and make easy money day-trading. They skip high school and head straight for neurosurgery. Discipline is necessary for success in most endeavors, but especially in the markets because they have no external controls. You have to watch yourself because no one else will, except for the margin clerk. You may put on the stupidest and self-destructive trades, but as long as you have enough money in your account, no one will stop you. No one will say hold on, wait, think what you¡¯re doing! Your broker will repeat your order to confirm he got it right. Once your order hits the market, other traders will scramble for the privilege of taking your money. Most fields of human endeavor have rules, yardsticks, and professional bodies to enforce discipline. No matter how independent you feel, there is always some agency looking over your shoulder. If a doctor in private practice starts writing too many prescriptions for painkillers, he¡¯ll soon hear from the health department. Markets impose no restrictions, as long as you have enough equity. Adding to losing positions is similar to overprescribing narcotics, but nobody will stop you. As a matter of fact, other market participants want you to be undisciplined and impulsive. That makes it easier for them to get your money. Your defense against self-destructiveness is discipline. You have to set up your own rules and follow them in order to prevent self-sabotage. Discipline means designing, testing, and following your trading system. It means learning to enter and exit in response to predefined signals rather than jumping in and out on a whim. It means doing the right thing, not the easy thing. And the first challenge on the road to disciplined trading involves setting up a record-keeping system. Record-Keeping Good traders keep good records. They keep them not just for their accountants but as tools of learning and discipline. If you do not have good records, how can you measure your performance, rate your progress, and learn from your mistakes? Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. When you decide to become a trader, you sign up for an expensive course. By the time you figure out the game, its cost may equal that of a college education, only most students never graduate¡ªthey drop out and get nothing for their money except for memories of a few wild rides. Whenever you decide to improve your performance in any area of life, record keeping helps. If you want to become a better runner, keeping records of your speeds is essential for designing better workouts. If money is a problem, keeping and reviewing records of all expenditures is certain to uncover wasteful tendencies. Keeping scrupulous records turns a spotlight on a problem and allows you to improve. Becoming a good trader means taking several courses¡ªpsychology, technical analysis, and money management. Each course requires its own set of records. You¡¯ll have to score high on all three in order to graduate. Your first essential record is a spreadsheet of all your trades. You have to keep track of entries and exits, slippage and commissions, as well as profits and losses. Chapter 5, ¡°Method¡ªTechnical Analysis¡± on trading channels will teach you to rate the quality of every trade, allowing you to compare performance across different markets and conditions. Another essential record shows the balance in your account at the end of each month. Plot it on a chart, creating an equity curve whose angle will tell you whether you are in gear with the market. The goal is a steady uptrend, punctuated by shallow declines. If your curve slopes down, it shows you¡¯re not in tune with the markets and must reduce the size of your trades. A jagged equity curve tends to be a sign of impulsive trading. Your trading diary is the third essential record. Whenever you enter a trade, print out the charts that prompted you to buy or sell. Paste them on the left page of a large notebook and write a few words explaining why you bought or sold, stating your profit objective and a stop. When you close out that trade, print out the charts again, paste them on the right page and write what you¡¯ve learned from the completed trade. These records are essential for all traders, and we will return to them later in Chapter 8, ¡°The Organized Trader.¡± A shoebox crammed with confirmation slips does not qualify as a record-keeping system. Too many records? Not enough time? Want to skip high school and dive into neurosurgery? Traders fail because of impatience and lack of discipline. Good records set you apart from the market crowd and put you on the road to success.
I examined this CCRT more closely after wake up in the morning. CCRT is toppy on hourly and daily chart, the hourly chart formed a bearish harami candle one day ago, the daily formed a bearish harami candle yesterday. However, if there is a pullback, based on its past trading history, it won't tank right away. Based on the weekly chart and longer timeframe, the "W" pattern has not finished, if it goes/finishes over $36.82, it could run to $40s, that's where its triple top is. CCRT will announce earnings in early May, probable another run before earnings and tank on earnings. If there is short trade on this stock, needs to lock in profit fast, cannot do swing hold. $36.85 is the resistence and $35.80 (trendline) is the support, break either side, more room to go - earnings will do it. As a trader, should keep eyes open, reverse the trade if it breaksout or breaks down. As a trend trader, have to think "uptrend", "downtrend", and "no trend". Most often, we forget "No trend" or choppy, in this phase, it frustrates most traders. "No trend" happens when the previous uptrend or downtrend finished, it tries to resume the old trend or re-establish a new trend after consolidating and re-testing the tops/bottoms. Again, use a bigger timeframe should get a bigger picture when wondering why a stock didn't tank or runup as expected. For each trade, think entry and exit, a hard stop must be placed on support/resistence. The weekly chart: The daily chart: The Hourly:
There is nothing impossible or improbable about making $5k a month from $25k or even $20k. I've done it, and have posted proof of it back then. Did it with 100-200 share lots. But that was when such scalping was possible with NYSE. That being said, Pennytrader seems to take some sizeable risks to bring those numbers. He seems to like risky, volatile stocks and earnings plays. I'm guessing he is experienced enough, but still, there seems to be a lack of proper risk control if you are only putting down $25k. Take $5k, and get a remote account is my advice. Put the rest in the bank as a safety net.
Thanks for stopping by. The more volatile a stock is, the more trading opprtunities it presents. As an investor, you don't want to hold a volatile stock, as a trader, that's a dream. I cannot make $ if a stock is trading flat and not moving at all, I don't do 1 or 2 tick scalping either as you were. It is all about risk control, it depends on what timeframe you use to trade - 10 ticks, 2 minutes, or hourly, daily, weekly or monthly. one always has the chance to make a profit, it is just a matter of time and profit expectation. I trade on TA and charts, I trade on confluence of various of timeframes, follow the trends to trade as much as possible. It doesn't matter how volatile a stock is, it always has a trading chance. I go short and go long, I trade on dynamic supports/resistences, I trade the opportunites the market presents with a hard stop for every trade, the market is always right, it doesn't matter if I make a winning trade or losing trade. No thanks for the advice, better leaves it you - "Take $5k, and get a remote account is my advice. Put the rest in the bank as a safety net.".
All I am saying is that you are trading stuff that can run right through your automated or mental stop and put you into heavy red. Unless you are sitting through all of that. It's not about cutting your losses, it's about simply having a chance to get out before the price moves another 20-30 cents against you. If you are comfortable with that cause of experience, then I understand. You should get a remote account through a "prop" firm though. You can get 1:10 leverage easily, so that would give you 50k on a $5k deposit.
Can't agree with you more. There is no way to make money out of flat trading stocks in a short period of time. Fluctuation is definitely trader's friend.
Still waiting for $ into my new account, should be there today. Watching the trading of EPCT. symmtrical triangle - could break down or break up, go long or go short on trendline break.