Great post, Profit! I'd add this thread, and in particular, Dustin's comments to the list: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=117547
Here is my gift to you: Learn about highs and lows, enough to determine if the big picture represents an uptrend, a downtrend or no trend at all. If the big picture is represented by an uptrend, you want to buy support and sell around resistance. If the big picture is represented by a downtrend, you want to short resistance and cover around support. Make sure the play supports a reward bigger than the risk so you have positive expectancy over the course of time. Once you got enough data, hundreds of trades, more even better, determine if your personal accuracy and risk vs reward is profitable. If so, you can go live. When profitable consistency has been achieved reinvest your gains in a responsible but consistent manner while not deviating from the original plan. Do not worry about accuracy, losses are inevitable and discipline and preservation of capital comes above all. Learning to take small losses and sticking to your original plan (target) are possibly your best friends in trading. Anek
Great book Helped me alot I dont think his pivot strategy is as high-probability as he claims also its a bit dated -- dates from 2005
=============== Izzyfo; Nice trade,TEX,study what you did right. Also thats a strong sector, probably should watch it & DE, for uptrends, especially DE Great way to get helped with trends; 50 day moving average, which is uptrending bull trend with DE, downtrending with SPY, so usually short downtrends/bear trends Compare DE to TEX with 50dma................. Trade smaller till you make profits; not that you or most new traders trade proper position [small size as a % of accounts] AAPL is too far below 50dma for me to buy; maybe bottom ,@120 maybe not.Simply too many better to go long on , & prefer something else to short. Also find out WHY experienced traders dont trade ''gigantic''; as a percent of thier accounts. Trading requires about as much [years/years usually]education as med DoctorS, then you get $$$$. Wisdom is profitable to direct
Agreed 100% --- I have learned it helps to have some view into breaking news - mainly to stay out of the way ---- TeamSpeak is free and seems to be pretty current
Having had some beginners luck in January -- and then gotten thumped in February -- I know this is harder than it seems. One point of clarification in your post would help--- can you consider the daily action a 'big enough' picture to decide the trend? ie the 3 month daily chart looks down and sorta-kinda flat recently -- especially the last 12 days is a trend for the day a sufficiently big picture --- to make bets accordingly or on a given day ---- if the longer term trend (bigger picture) is down ---- look for the up-moves during the day and short them? hopefully I am making some sense here.....
It depends on what kind of trader you are. If a micro scalper using the big picture as reference is useless so you only stick to the intraday trends, chances are there will be many. Now, if you prefer intraday swing trades then I suggest a chart showing the trend of the past 1-5 days supplemented by the daily. Anek
My wisdom... in college, sleeping with five 2s is better than one 10. 5x2 > 10 Bet they didn't teach you that in algebra.