nod Welcome home, hope you guys had a great time. If when you came home the house was spic and span and your son was grinning...........you know he had a great time. I keep thinking you will be that really good trader you and any other trader seeks to be. Yeah, yeah, we all know many fail but as we progress in our own trading we understand why. Did you notice the 'keyword" in that last sentence? Right, progress. Without progress traders are just spinning their wheels and burning through an account. Without progress there is no improvement. A lack of progress means the trader has not changed some items. In the beginning new traders are faced with giga choices in instruments, timeframes, indicators, methods, tactics etc, etc. Kind of like a young man entering high school and seeing a whole new world filled with pretty gals, so many gals so little time. Reverse that for said pretty gals. I suggest to you to narrow the field. Why do i think you would be a really good index trader? Be it nazdaq index like the NQ or my favorite main squeeze, the ES. I would further suggest trading for the intraday swings in said instrument whatever "IT" may be. Let me say it another way...................... scalping and you do not seem to mix well. You need to have wider profit expectations per trade, you need to be more attuned to TA and "measured moves" relative to the breakout expected. You are a fine canidate for trading from "LEVEL TO LEVEL". I think you will be surprised how profits can pile up on MOST days if you hang with the big boys and girls and trade like they do. Might i suggest you watch our former dude in ET chat (who also is no longer in there as our chat is hit and miss), that dude being AMT, the guy that works on homemade airplanes that banjo has projected to fly 42 feet off the ground. AMT trades levels as i do, he calls the "support/resistence world by a different name but TA is TA. He has good stuff which i think you might do good to look into. You can as many of us individual types do and place your own flavor to the "levels". Try something different besides scalping, open those wings and fly higher, see a bigger horizon, get on that white horse with Mr Nod as the white knight and ride, giddyup. Thats all suggestions for now. Be it even stocks as your preferred items, go for more than scalping, go for the "meat" of the intraday swings. opps, sorry, go for the vitamins from the veggies. PS: remember this in choosing an instrument to trade...........you gotta know the terrotory. learn it as you never learned anything else in life, the rewards are worth the effort.
Thanks, Hog. I only intend to scalp during down times when a stock establishes a range. I can't do that now, because of the commission and stop issues, but had no problem with IB's book trader. I still intend to give ES a go. I've been wondering if AMT managed to go long over the past couple months, ha!
nod To tell you the truth i have not followed amt levels that close because i do only use my own for trades. I do seem to remember him doing longs as well as short calls on levels. I will look at the thread more just to see. Have a good day trading, or should i say have a good daytrading day? PS: If tradingbug drops in, You might ask him more about amt levels. bug is a close follower and can give a better answer than i can. Thunderstorms last night, cable is out, did i ever mention Charter cable is horseshit? Charter is in bankrupt also.
Oops - wrong animal - but thanks, and very cool! The resort was carved out of the jungle by a close family friend, who flirted with bankruptcy for years, but survived long enough until the cruise ships finally took notice, and started delivering boat loads of guests. He may have sold the place last year, I'm not sure - his name is Cy and he sports a ponytail - did ya happen to meet him?
(Mephisto, I don't recall seeing him.) -$176 (not taking credit for that LPS trade) Offered 43.45 HANS at open because it often lifts anything within a dollar of previous dayâs close, but it opened much lower. Then I watched it rise above 43.00, prepared to short and it fell .20 cents. I thought it was no longer an ideal entry price there, and that was the wrong thought. Looking to scalp a bit of STEC @ 14.06, pull back from significantly lower high, covered @ 13.95 pivot from double bottom for a $45 net gain. I expected a good re-shortable bounce off the double bottom, but that didnât happen. Watched GIL climb then find resistance around 14.57. It was pushing that level pretty hard on every small pullback, so I planned to short it with a very tight stop just above the HOD, but no shares available. Shorted LPS via husbandâs IB account during the doldrums to scalp (no Etrade shares available). I had him short @ 28.00, and place a stop @ 28.10. He had to leave for an appointment, so I had him close half the position for a $50 gain and move the stop to break even on the other half. But the way IB works is when you close out half a position and a stop is in place, the stop is still in place. So the Buy stop was still active when the remaining half position closed at break even and triggered an equal position to the long side. We had no idea until he returned to his desk, saw the open long position and closed it for an additional $190 gain. He only uses mental stops, so this was a result of me making him use a hard stop because he was leaving. Maybe a good strategy is to always do that, kind of like hitting reverse when a trade setup becomes invalidated at your stop price. Of course, itâs important to do it intentionally; couldâve been a disaster. Decided to trade POT and do Mark Douglas exercise of taking all my setups. Overall I traded well. I stepped out of my office a couple times and missed two very strong setups, and I put in a HANS trade in between (screwed up that one too with the stop/limit default on my order entry), and then quantity on next POT trade was defaulted 5x what I was trading and I took a larger loss than should have, resulting in overall negative day for POT. Without the error, wouldâve been positive POT day. POT is so volatile, you really have to be fast to time solid entries. Too many POT trades to detail, but suffice it to say I shorted each rally to overbought and experimented with various stop strategies. POT is a stop placement challenge because of its volatility, but I found a method that works for me.
NoDoji Registered: May 2008 Posts: 1230 05-14-09 04:11 PM (Mephisto, I don't recall seeing him.) -$176 (not taking credit for that LPS trade) Offered 43.45 HANS at open because it often lifts anything within a dollar of previous dayâs close, but it opened much lower. Then I watched it rise above 43.00, prepared to short and it fell .20 cents. I thought it was no longer an ideal entry price there, and that was the wrong thought. ....................END.................. NOD, Do NOT think, just trade your signals. THINK about that. When you are playing a game of odds, the odds are determined from your signals being applied over and over and then your mind will allow you to develope the "trading muscles" to take the signals without thinking as your trading becomes more and more automatic. Automatic comes from doing the same thing over and over NOT thinking. You go girl!!!!
Hog, you bet! Yesterday was the first time I really put that to work and it felt great. Removing the two fat finger errors that cost me over $300 instead of $60, I exercised perfect discipline and trade management from start to finish. After demo trading with IB, I realized that my current trading platform has inhibited me from trading the way I prefer to trade, and has put a huge dent in my profit potential over the past several months.
- $224 Day - $132 Week - $124 Month + 12506 YTD Offered 110.95 POT, missed and sadly I did not chase, and I really donât know why, and why I didn't stick with POT for the lower high short play. Short STEC @ 14.12 near HOD and stalled, stop @ 14.23, hit for a $70 net loss. Patience in waiting for test of the actual HOD wouldâve made this a nice trade to the short side. 10:00 a.m.: Short HANS @ 42.70 pullback from failure to make a new high, stop above HOD. It failed to break the HOD, pulled back and stagnated for over half an hour and I watched the L2 action the whole time, learning, learning, learning. When it finally broke down I used L2 to cover @ 42.39, .03 cents from the hard bounce right back to my entry price, for a net $143 gain. Pleased with this trade in every way. Mr. NoD is using a signaling system and he calls AYE long. Itâs fallen off a cliff, no news, and I watch it test the 24.40 area a couple times then move up off 3rd test, establishing support. I bid 24.50 at the ask and it literally soars away from me .50 cents before the order registers. Then I was afraid to chase it, but it was still a solid long from there. Watching RHT for a test of the HOD, then wasted money on scratch trades instead of being patient for the test. I really canât believe I still jump into trades early even though Iâm literally saying to myself âtest of high comingâ. I get sucked in by the little price stall and need to remind myself that if I miss a trade, so what, thereâs another boat coming along, as Mr R.W. keeps telling me. 12: 31 p.m.: So I short RHT @ 19.43 pullback from failure to make a new high (without giving it time to truly test that high), stop @ 19.53 hit for a $48 net loss. 12:43 p.m.: Short RHT @ 19.43 again, same setup, covered @ 19.49 manually when the trade invalidated, for a $40 net loss. 12:57 p.m.: Short HANS @ 42.70 again, same setup as before, stop @ 42.81, triggered quite a while later for a $49 net loss. 1:24 p.m.: Short RHT @ 19.51, same setup as before except this time it had no volume as it tested the HOD, and I put on the trade as soon as it dipped below the 10-period SMA. Covered @ 19.35 based on L2 action for a $72 net gain and just .03 cents from the pivot point. This was a perfect trade in terms of setup, time of day (1:30 p.m. is a key reversal time) and a well-read exit. I later tried top picking on RHT several times, but was unable to properly pull off my desired tactics due to delays in order processing, so I got less than ideal entries and then failed to exit when L2 action indicated, using stops instead, and Etrade stops have to be .10 cents away, so basically death by a thousand stops today. And THEN I didnât short the last run of the day and that was the real selloff. I was kind of burnt on stop outs by then. I think I will try trading from Mr. NoDâs IB on Monday and see if I can pull off my tactics as well I think I can. Today not a single one of my afternoon RHT trades would have lost a penny had I used IB. In fact, my worst case out of each of these trades wouldâve produced a minimum return of $15 after commissions. My confidence with IB is sky high now. I see how easily it lends itself to my style of trading and my comfort level. I'm extremely pleased with my several weeks of strict disciplined trade management. I can't say that I didn't contemplate such things as changing my stops, or using a scaling tactic based on an assumption of what would "surely happen". But I stopped myself in my tracks, and did not deviate from the plan. I now finally feel ready to increase my position size once I'm settled in to the proper platform. Now the proof will be in the doing, and hopefully I wonât make the same mistakes I made in demo trading with IB! Have a great weekend everyone!