Over the past couple of years I've enjoyed reading people's journals on this forum - and so I've decided to try posting some of my swing trades. Hopefully, this will be informative, will spark some interesting discussions and not take too much additional time The main part of my trading work is devoted to daytrading the ES and the NQ. However, early in the morning and for an hour or so in the evening, I devote some attention and effort to setting up and managing swing trades, using tools such as OmniTrader, KwikPop, Trade Prospector, etc. This account (which I call my intermediate portfolio) has been doing quite well, although there have been periods of semi-serious drawdowns. Here's a summary of my methodology, which is fairly standard in this type of trading: 1. Get some idea as to the chances the overall market is going up, down or sideways that day; assign a directional factor from -3 (for quite bearish) to +3 (quite bullish); 2. Use daily charts to scan the market for best candidates for longs and shorts; 3. Use the directional factor mentioned above to modulate and finalize the number of longs and/or shorts for that day; 4. Enter early in the morning and then use the 15-30 min charts to monitor during the day (loosely) and occasionally intervene; 5. Set a stoploss per the daily chart - rarely accept more than 5%; 6. Set a similar profit target for part (usually 1/3) of the position; 7. Trail the rest and gradually tighten the trailing stop (if the position gets lucky). These trades last for 2-5 days. About half of them are successful, but the winners win more than the losers lose. Money management (a la my own simple variation of the fixed ratio method) does the rest. I try to start each position with a, more or less, equal amount, meaning that I get more shares for less expensive stocks, etc. The portfolio had open positions already, but here's what I did this morning (trying to get a neutral place to start off the journal) : WYNN: Long @$30.07 COMS: Long @$8.65 FFIC: Long @$18.99 LAB: Long @$11.07 MLNM: Short @$17.60 UVN: Short @$37.00 CCU: Short @$45.22 LSCC: Short @$11.07 Keeping my fingers crossed
I exited a few positions yesterday - some because their stoplosses were hit, others because I wanted to lock in profits at the very end of the day: WYNN Long: exited all at 29.6 -.47 COMS Long: exited all at 8.51 - .14 FFIC Long: exited all at 18.72 -.27 LAB Long: exited all at 10.69 -.38 UVN Short: exited part at 36.1 +.90 CCU Short: exited part at 44.6 +.62 LSCC Short: exited part at 10.52 +.55 And placed a few new trades this morning: EWBC Long: at 52.30 FTO Long: at 17.62 DJ Short: at 48.94 TFS Short: at 5.06 MCDT Short: at 9.10 CSX Short: at 32.36 YUM Short: at 33.04 Again, keeping my fingers crossed!