Hey guys. I have been a member of ET for a few years and decided to start a swing trading journal. I will be posting all my swing trades on daily basis.. I will try to be as realtime as possible. My methods are simple. I trade pullbacks and breakouts. ALways trade stocks above the 50day MA.. and I like to see above average volume coming into the stock. I use tc2000, prophet charts, and stockfetcher for scanning everyday. I just looks for stocks that I think are pulling back as orderly as possible or breaking out of bases or consolidation patterns with a rush of volume. Normally, when trading stocks I always favor the long side.. because thats where the real money is to be made. I do ocassionally short the market when the major indices are unde their 50ma like we are now. But i have backtested my results and realize that there is always money to be made on the longside regardless or bull or bear market. If the thread goes well... I will continue posting.. if no one is interested I probably will eventually just close it out. --Mike
I also have a subscrition with IBD and Stocktables and look at the rankings of stocks.. if a stock is breaking out on huge volume and it comes up on my alerts I almost always take on a bigger position than normal if the stock has strong IBD ratings and the market tone is positive. I think it just gives it more fuel to the fire. Also if there are buyout rumors or really powerfull earnings behind the stock.. I might give it a bit more size than normal. My avg. hold time is 1-10 days. I usually scale into my positions.. not entering or exiting everything in one shot. This makes it easier for me to trade psychologically. I dont have an exact magical system or daytrade anymore. I gave that up a while ago.. after I never really made any $ that way. --MIKE
I have been swing trading for over 5 years and have been pretty consistent with my results. I am right about 60% of the time.. and I make 1.5x more on a winner than on a loser. I am very quick taking losses and have absolutely no regrets closing out my losing positions. Throughout the years I got used to booking losing trades and thats something you gain through experience. My p&l usually chops around most the time and the way I make my money is via windfall profits. That means most of the time i take small gains and small losses and I just churn my account.. but then after a while I nail a huge winner and thats how my account grows. I would say 10% of my trades make the majority of my money. Over the years I have grown comfortable with this. --MIKE
Right now.. I have 2 open positions. Long STTS & GKIS. I am long 1000 stts from 6.85 and 300 GKIS from 16. Stts is forming a nice base and did break out a few weeks ago.. it has strong volume accumulation signs on the daily chart... and has been holding relatively well as the nasdaq broke new multi month lows. GKIS is in a good sector and the stock is locked in a strong uptrend. As long as it stays above its 50ma i will stay long.
I believe swing trade very profitable and low risk. Backtesting of buying weekly high breakout on heavy vol shows great on STTS and GKIS. Although their average fundamental ranking on my list are far below the average among 5000 stocks I am watching, their patterns are good to go long. Can you tell more how you pick and signals you enter, etc...? Thanks,
First of all.. how do u rate your stocks fundementally? What do u use to analyze their fundies? I simply use IBD and stocktables. The tecnicals are more important to me though. Basically i try to enter on the breakout day.. where the volume is greater than avg and the stock is trading near the high of day. I usually enter stocks after lunchtime or near EOD. I constantly scan the market with prophet scanner for high volume breakouts. At the end of day.. I run my EOD scans for trades to enter the next day .. those are my pullback trades. I place buystop order over highs for the next day. So basically I use 2 methods.. for breakouts I enter that same day that I catch them popping and volume surging which i use realtime scanner... and then I have my end of day scans which I find orderly pullbacks ( kinda similar to Dave Landry from tradingmarkets).. and enter with buystop order next day. --MIKE
Very Interesting...especially coming from someone like yourself who has been around here for awhile... I'm looking forward to your journal... Good Luck!
occasionally.. I swing trade the emini futures.. but I almost always play the short side on them. If i am fully long and I think the market might crack.. I almost always short a few emini contracts as a hedge. I never felt comfortable going heavily short stocks because stocks behave much more sporadic and volatile when they collapse. The moves are very fast and emotional and your timing has to be flawless. When a stock is climbing upwards.. the moves are always more orderly, smoother.. less volatile and more controlled. Just look at a chart like AAPL vs DRL. I hate shorting stocks that are locked in prolonged downtrends.. because they have a high tendency to gap up on a short squeeze on the slightest positive news... man i've been burned so many times doing this. Pro traders usually try to short the dead bounces in downtrends.. except the problem with that.. is that the bounces can be wild and volatility out of control. I would much rather buy the dip on a nice uptrend then short the bounce on a nice downtrend... whatever anyone says.. both are not the same thing. Its not like just taking a chart and flipping it over... thats a huge mistake rookie traders make. The volatility and risk are completely different. --MIKE