GM, you got great advice here (especially Gubinec's). You can pay $30 (buy a book), $300 (buy a DVD), $3,000 (buy a course), or $30,000 (buy a mentor) for training and it can be best training available, and it will not guarantee profitability. I can teach you to trade profitably for free and you won't make money until you master the psychology of trading.
Why post PNL statements? Why not? If someone is willing to provide advice I would like to hear it from a consistently profitable trader that has gone through the learning curve. I could give advice too, but since I'm not successful my advice isn't worth much. I have only seen one profitable day trader and he records videos of his trades which you can subscribe to and offers a monthly subscription to watch him trade live daily. He is profitable in today's market with HFTs and all. I want to day trade profitably too. I've swing traded an account and I've made 31% the past twelve months, turning $290K into $385K. So I do not mind spending $20K of those profits to spend 5 weeks in NY enjoying a vacation and taking the class. Since my day trading is a losing proposition at this time and I'm determined to turn it around by sweat and study and investing, I want to get the best training I can. So far the SMB Training appears to be it. Still, before I commit I would like some sound advice and recommendations for training. I've read all the books and watch videos, etc., now I would like some good, sound training, so I don't continue flushing money down the day trading plumbing system.
Why are you trying to day trade when your apparently profitably swing trading? Doesn't make any sense to me. What are your real motivations for wanting to learn to day trade?
I want to be able to consistently earn more money day trading. Its the challenge, the excitement, and the instant gratification. I want to make more money, $1K plus per day. I want to be able to quit my job and be able to "rely" on day trading for income. I've seen someone do it and I want to be able to do it too.
I assume you use a daily chart for swing trading, and it seems you are quite successful. To day trade successfully, look at an intraday chart with, say, 5-min price bars and just pretend they're daily price bars on a 3- or 6-month chart and do the same thing you're already doing successfully with daily price bars. I day trade a 5-min chart and I swing trade in my IRA accounts. I do the same thing, only in different time frames. For example, in a 5-min time frame, if I see price make a long strong decline, form a base of support, break the previous resistance level in the down trend, close above the 20-bar MA, pull back and find support at a higher low, I will buy a break of a previous price bar off that higher low. This is the sign of a trend reversal (a new trend). I'll hold as each previous resistance level is broken and holds as new support, or will take profits on each new high and re-enter at pullbacks to previous resistance. Using the same tactic for swing trading with a daily chart, in December I bought a stock in the IRA accounts that had been in a steady down trend from April highs and finally double-bottomed, broke previous R, and pulled back to a higher low. I bought it as it broke previous resistance from a couple days earlier as well as the 20-day MA, looking to take advantage of a trend reversal. The new trend has been pure textbook, with strong breakouts fallowed by pullbacks to previous resistance which becomes new support. Because there's been no signal to exit this trade, and it's now very close to those April 2010 highs, I'm still holding. Another day trading tactic I use is breakouts to new highs in an uptrend. I buy the new high in a strong uptrend. Similarly, in my IRAs I bought a stock last month that had broken out to a 52-week high, pulled back to find support just above previous resistance, and then broke out to a new 52-high. I bought well above the new high and still holding this one, which made yet another 52-week high just last week. The tactics I use are identical for day trading and swing trading; the major difference is with day trading you have to think fast, whereas with swing trading you have a LOT of time to look over the charts and set up your plan.
I was hoping for your sake you wouldn't say this. Be careful because you may just get more excitement and challenges then you can handle. Instant gratification but long term suffering. You may get what you really want but this may not necessarily be good for you
What are you doing differently in your day trading compared to your swing trading? In the swing account I let it run up or down with bigger stops. I'm only allowed to trade 3x's per month which may save me from myself. And, the market has been on a good uptrend for awhile now so I remain 90% invested in small caps until a good reason to adjust comes about. In the day trade I look for movers and support levels to trade off as follows: 1. If the market is moving up I look at the sector moving the most and then the stocks in that sector. Rather than jump on the leader I'll look for sympathy plays with stocks I'm most familiar with that trade >2M sh/day; 20-120 price; small spread. 2. Once I've ID'd the stocks I'll try find good entry points: new high; off support; moving up to resistance and through; or pick bottoms of stocks moving down that I think should reverse. 3. I get stopped out alot. I may trade this several times on one stock, getting stopped out several times. Appears to be a bad habit. 4. I will often buy as price is going up into a daily resistance with the plan to add another lot or two on breakouts above this level. This doesn't work very well either. Often it will drop some (.10-.15) and I'll add another lot so I'm deeper and get stopped out of that too. 5. I seem to get in at the top of every "wave" which approaches previous intra-day resistance and stop myself out at the bottom. I would think 50% of my trades would be in the money; but it doesn't happen that way. I'm considering trading contrarily (shorting) to the trades above as there seems to be a higher probability that the short would work better than my long. I do have profitable days, often trading 40-50K shares. Then the commissions start to eat up the profits. If I can improve my trades to decrease my losses by 0.01 cents per share (the spread on most stocks I try to trade), that would increase my day by $500.00 and I would be profitable. So I don't think I'm too far off from reaching my goal.
How do you determine whether buying a new high is a high probability or low probability trade? How do you determine if price moving up off a support level is a buy signal or the beginning of a setup for a high probability short position? What do you think indicates a reversal signal off a possible bottom? It sounds like your swing trading was mainly to the long side last year.