Hi I've been trading for almost 10 years now, this has been my only source of income and I had done very well by my standards up until 2008. I finished last year with a small profit but I'm very disappointed with my performance which was hurt due to change of my trading style. I'm going back to my original trading ways, scalping NYSE listed stocks, most trades will be done between 9.3-10.3 Almost never overnights. In this journal you can follow me trade the way I would teach a close friend to trade if he was to start from 0. I will start with 200 share positions for stocks over 20 dollars and 400 shares for stock under 20. After 3 consecutive up days I will increase my trading size and after 3 consecutive down days I will decrease it. The starting daily loss limit is 300 dollars, if I lose 10000 dollars overall I will stop trading for the year. A bit later I will give some of my rules and criteria for trades, at the end of the trading day will post the p&l and trades for that day.
I will start here with trading NYSE listed stock with price over 5. Since my starting size is minimal there is no average daily volume limit on stocks to trade, if size gets bigger I will have to take volume into consideration. Around 9.15 in the morning I will pick 2-4 stocks for trading that particular day, I will try to post the picks around 9.25 in this thread. Here's the picture of my screen, so you know what I'm looking at during trading, markets are closed right now but you'll get the idea, I'll post another pic when markets are open.
As you can see I have 2 active montages with time and sale, I keep 2 main stock candidates for trading on that particular day there. I will put 2-3 more stocks to keep an eye on that day in the quote monitor in the top middle. As you can see I also have quotes for about 50 stocks that I keep an eye on any given day. Right now I'm using only one monitor, if this goes on as planned I'll add another monitor soon. For now the top chart will be s&p futures, and the bottom chart will be 5 min. 1 day chart for the stock that I concentrate at the moment, its important for me to have volume for that chart. Nothing special to tell about the setup, there's the daily position and p&l window and order / execution message windows.
Now back to which stocks to trade. I like to trade stocks that have (or I think will have) big openning gaps. I look at premarket biggest winners/losers, and previous day's afterhours biggest winners/losers. Also I check the stocks in play for that particular day to try and find the stocks that would be most volatile for that trading day and that correspond to my criteria. I like stocks that have earnings related big announcements on that day. I don't like to trade stocks that have moved due to broker or rating company upgrades/downgrades. Also don't trade ADR's, they will come up a lot on premarket movers filters but are not suitable for my trading. I will trade from both sides, long and short. In general I like to trade the weak stocks from short side and strong stocks from long side. Overall market is also a consideration during trading, also stock's realtive strengh compared to other stocks in industry and overall market is a consideration. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to post. Also I would appreciate comments and any ways you see I could improve.
watching STT state street and PH parker hannifin, keeping eye also on BK, DB, CS and all the financials
disappointed with results for such a great trading day, i got distracted right before the market open, was rusty and slow, didn't adjust for market volatility traded 2000 shares overall, in 100 and 200 share positions, the p&l is only for listed stocks (which is the reason for me to create this thread) and doesn't include commissions
trading BLK blackrock today, keeping eye on all financials, maybe possible trade in PNC for me, IBM meets all premarket criteria for me to trade but its in my no trading list together with TXN and a couple of other stocks edit: SPW came up on the screen as well
NTRS has a nice big gap up this AM on a good earnings report. Ought to provide plenty of volatility to trade today.