It's a two edged sword, gaps up as well as down. Gap-downs will happen more frequently after a large move up. Try and use logic in your plan. Where are the S/R levels forming, consider round numbers. Try and avoid canned indicators as they are for the most part not logical, ie a trailing moving average 100MA is price about 50 days back, it is non logical to trade that nonsense.
It's against human nature to buy at record highs. We all want a bargain. But every stock that goes to the moon breaks the record highs all the way up.
There are some cases where you buy when the price is at a record high. This is one case. Penny stock hardly moves for many months/years. Manipulators start buying it pushing the price higher and higher. You have to be a few steps from the manipulators. A few days later, the manipulators get out, and the price collapse.
“Win or lose, everybody gets what they want out of the market. Some people seem to like to lose, so they win by losing money.” Ed Seykota
You could possibly turn this around with approaching trading a different way. (a) Don't look or concentrate on profit or losses, ie don't concentrate on your account. (b) Only concentrate on signals from your positions, buy/sell signals. Trading is a game, so you need to apply game theory, study the game. (c) Trade a bare number of instruments at any one time, think to yourself "if I can't make money on what I'm already holding, why should I make money by adding to further positions". (d) If you can't make money then your approach is seriously flawed and needs scrapping. (e) If you are manually discretionary trading off charts alone, ie no algo assistance, I doubt you will succeed. Trading is like juggling numerous balls in the air at one time, unless you have a super good memory and quick reflexes it is nigh impossible imo. (f) Trading entails lots of experience and discipline.
Not altogether true, partially true. My wife trades totally opposite to how I would, uses no algos. She has a good brain though, very good memory. She is a good trader.
Hey, I appreciate your words. I was joking. I banter a lot with others, but maybe actually saying those words is something I believe deep down? Ideas and words are weapons in themselves. I am pretty much fully manual but I have done some programming/test. I also do have some ideas that I want to work on but I am juggling working, studying, and life. So that takes most of my day up. I guess I am building multiple outcomes for my life while not getting burned out as I have become quite disciplined in my life. I only started thinking of trading because I got good enough at studying for exams to free up some time. So once I optimize my studying even more to where I don't take 2-3hrs a day after 8hrs of work and sometimes a commute since I work hybrid I will probably start working more on trading again. Thank you for your words again.
My wife berated the shit out of me a couple of months back that I should buy into a particular penny gold stock. I wasn't convinced, as some gold penny stocks have been a nightmare to me in the past. Anyhow she pestered the shit out of me insisting I should buy a million shares. I finally relented because I knew she would mock the shit out of me for "missing out on the profits". I never trade anyone else's recommedations but I feared the mocking coming. I reasoned if she were wrong then I'd give her a serve instead. Anyhow I bought 700,000, not 1 million as I told her "mate that's all I'm doing, take it or leave it". As of today my wife informed me I'm up 64%. I don't look at profits, I just have a beady eye out for the sell signal. Moral of the story: There's a zillion ways to pull in money, they're all different. Edit: Wife also has the same stock so combined we own quite a large position, well into 5 figures.