Mr Oz: Really appreciate your contributions. If I seem harsh with my comment it is just that I am eager to learn, please do not take it as a question of your wisdom/experience, although I have always been skeptical with people who write books and give seminars (hey I just want to be honest, believe me if your stuff is as good as advertised I am very sure I can let a lot of people know about it). Without further ado: I have some questions regarding your strategy as well, I am not referring to overnight stuff, all of my questions are ONLY for intraday trading. I only trade listed hence I am not referring to any Nasdaq stocks either. I have filter software and I have recreated some of your scans and watched some of the scenarios unfold. I do not question the effectiveness of this strategy in swing trading, but I have many concerns about whether this works at all in intraday trading. Every strategy has its subtle details, if I understand correctly an ideal set-up for your sky scraper would be something that is stretched (overbought whether by eye ball, bollinger bands, stochastics, whatever) with declining volume. On the bottom picking play I would assume that you are looking for something oversold with extreme volume to hopefully signify a bottom. Ideally Obviously it needs to be say at least $20 per share and trades say half a million shares a day, but I am wondering if there are anything else that would increase the probability of your shots. Do you short stocks that are near their 52 week high's? Do you long stocks that are near their 52 week low's? Or there are additional criterias? Like certain candlestick patterns (doji/hammer/shooting stars). The examples provided on your site are all best case scenarios and really doesn't do anything to illustrate how would you really execute this play when something goes wrong. For example, a stock like GMT or PDX, that has been selling off on super thick volume will obviously provide a stronger bounce than say, some stock that is on a casual pullback. But with increased volatility you will lose half a point in a stock like PDX in no time flat when you mis-time your entry, I think in intraday trading "target" is total garbage, you don't know where the thing will close at, you are not holding it overnight and you have to start taking profit off the table at some point. That's why if you ask me there is no way you can use a PRECISE risk/reward ratio when it comes to any intraday trade, the best you can do is to say I am not giving up too wide of a stop (because you always have to factor in slippage). What exactly do you use as a trailing stop? (Moving Averages? Bollinger Bands?) How much wiggle room do you actually give your positions? How do you size your intraday positions? Then there is the issue of shorting a stock like EMC, you see the Nasdaq going up in your face and EMC is . . . well EMC . . . What do you do? Tighten your stops? Get out? All I am asking is a few real world examples (preferably trades that didn't go 100% as planned,) from a day trader's perspective. I want to know how reactionary you are to tape/futures and how much do you let it influence your trading. And of course, the biggest draw back of this strategy is that it will give you a lot of random names, and you will be playing unfamiliar territory a lot, and you won't know the rthyme of the stock and can't tell what's a shake out etc . . . Do you LIMIT your filter to a basket of stocks you trade over and over again? Anyway when my filter is fully running I will play it more with 200 shares, really appreciate any info you can provide, this will be a very strong addition to my reactionary game . . .
Hitman, All your questions are VALID and cannot be answered in one post! I admire everything that you are doing and think that you have provided the readers on this forum with priceless information. It takes courage to do what you are doing here on a daily basis. There are a few things I would love to do for you if you give me the chance. First, if you email me tony@tonyoz.com your mailing address, I will mail you my books. I think you will see many imperfect examples in the book The Stock Trader. I think my new book will give you more in depth look into how I trade my strategies. It will be my honor to send you these books for everything you have done for the trading community. Next, if you email me your telephone number, I will gladly call you and let you pick my brain. Since I have been trading for 15 years, I often feel like I am looking in the mirror, some years back, when I read your posts. I don't just admire your drive and determination, but I also relate to your stories with some of the same first-hand experience. Finally, you wrote, "although I have always been skeptical with people who write books and give seminars ..." You should be skeptical! I can't blame anyone who questions why will one take the time to teach if he can successfully trade. Before I continue, I like to say that in 2001, I average about 100 trades a month (about the same volume that is in the book the stock trader) and that on average I have made more money on a monthly basis than I did in that book. I am trading a much bigger account though. Now that I took that off my chest, I will proceed and tell you all why I do it. 1. I enjoy it. It allows me to take pride in what I do for a living. 2. It makes me a better trader. 3. It makes me a better trader. 4. It makes me even a better trader Although all of the above are 100% true, what motivated me to write and teach in the first place is the following (quoted from page 203 of my new book). Q: Why are you doing this? A: On 12/4/97 my son Jordan was born and my life completely changed. As a father, my only wish for him besides good health is for all his dreams to come true. It didnât take me too long to realized that my son will need all the help he can get in order to fulfill his dreams. This reality has been the driving force behind all my work. My philosophy is simple. If I will do all I can to help fulfill the dreams of others, in the future, someone will return the favor to my son. And I truly believe that it all comes back to you 10-fold later on! Jordan's picture is on this page http://www.stockjunkie.com/setup2.gif After I started writing, I continued for my own selfish reasons. I finally found what was missing in my life, and now that I found it, I just kept on doing it. After trading for more than ten years and creating nothing of value, I finally created something of value that I could be proud of. If any of you still think that I'm full of it, look at my son's picture again. If I didn't trade for a living, I couldn't possibly justify the setup I have, wouldn't you agree? Trade Smart!
Tony, thanks for taking the time to clarify this for us. Just wanted to ask why you would have lost the position when the stop loss would have been much higher than $11.35 (close of previous day)? Wouldn't the stop have been placed at $11.48 or $11.80 (high on Monday)?
Actually, the way I trail a stop loss going into the next day for a short position is to look at the morning high (first 15-45 minutes). Once that is taken out, I close the position immediately especially if the market is strong. In my book, I have an example for trailing stops, and I refer to a long position trade and suggest taking the low of the first 45 minutes and placing a stop below that level. Obviously for a short it will be over the high. Now the question is do I have to wait 45 minutes to set a low or a high? Well, absolutely not! There were far too many reasons to exit this short. I also have a mathematical calculation I use to determine trailing stops, but it is more reliable for stocks over 30. Attached is a picture of the calculation, and as you can see, if my price target is 11.95 then my maximum trailing stop would be 12.69. I will show the price target of 10.81 in the next post. However, a re-entry based on the strategies outlined on page 91 of the new book would have worked like a charm. But as my buddy Bill says, hindsight is 20-20. In all honesty, if I were in the trade, I would have been stopped out while my trailing stop triggered. Can't attach more than one file, so I'll continue on the next post
So if I were to use the neutral price target of 10.81 on the trade, then my trailing stop would be placed at 12.98. But as I say in my book, "Support and Resistance first, then calculator." So taking out the morning high would have gotton me out. The original price target calculation are here http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=21823 I hope this helps. Gonna go try to sleep for a couple of hours. Novocain (sp) always kills my sleep. I hate that stuff!
Tony, I am confused . The calculator you gave us in the seminar does not have this stop loss calculation on it. Is there something wrong with my calculator or is the one you show in your post is only for your own use?
Tony, I will not know the full capability of your calculator until I download it. However, in the example of its output shown on this link http://www.tonyoz.com/bottom.htm the profit and loss are shown in dollars. The alternative of showing percentages would be nice.
1. Finally I started with the Realtick Oz-Scanners today - I had some quite good trades (MAGS, ALKS, MTON) and some bad ones (BEAS, OSIP) - but the bad ones were definitely not the fault of the Scanner or Tony 2. In the start of the day it's quite hard to evaluate all the trdaes that are "offered" by the Scanners (I use only Bottom Fisher and Sky Scraper for the start) - I have done my reasearch visually yesterday (because I didn't know when I would get the Scanners) - some showed up on the Scanners, some did not (at least I didn't notice them) - my list was: Bottom Fisher: HGMCY, VSNX, VZ Skyscraper: VRC, TOM, RSTN, GERN, ALKS, GILD, PPG, VRTA, ROST, RFMD, GBBK, RBGK As you can see, I only looked at NASDAQ-Stocks - that's quite a list (volume>500000, price>5/10) - some hundred stocks - so you can just take a glance. Isn't it possible to get some scan results before trading starts, so you can evalutae the best setups and then just get in when the price triggers your entry point ? 3. It's great that you really can be one stock short and one long - and make money on both sides the same time: MAGS - MTON ! 4. Another problem is that many stocks do their moves early in the trading day - so if you don't get in early, you will miss a lot of the move - for example: VSNX. 5. Thank you MAGNA for your explanations regarding up- and downday: if you do the screening visually it's much easier to just look if the candles are green or red - and if there are some hundred stocks to look at ... It would be an "advantage" if the last candle has a "different" color, especially has been a reversal day - it's hard to find visually at a glance but may be very effective, isn't it ? 6. @Hitman Tony is absolutely right - it's great to read your experiances - although I didn't read too much until now - I just started reading this Board a week or so ago - before I only have been on german boards - I do not have any language problems there 7. @TonyOz I'm sure there are a lot of people on this board which are not "offended" by any comments from you - wheter you do write books, give seminars and so on or not - but I have to admit that generally I'm also very suspicious regarding people giving seminars - when it comes to trading (but nobody has to to what they say - and if you follow them without questioning, it's your own fault)! 8. @Sniper Trader I hope, you're fine again - I hope you will give us some insight in your trades again ! 9. Another problem with the scanners is that you also get stocks with extremely low volume: for example PHCC showed up (the stock has an avg vol > 1.000.000) but today only about 100.000 10. That's it for today - it's quite late here in Europe. To sum up: - The Scanners are great ! - I wish I had more time to evaluate the trades before I get in !
Harry, It takes time to get used to it! It's just like looking at level II screens for the first time. Then it becomes much easier. You will learn to move quickly and find a couple of good setups on a daily basis. You will also miss a lot of them! But as long as you get a couple of good ones a week, it is well worth it. Remember my quote before when I said that I can't see myself ever trading without this tool, you will feel the same way shortly. Harry: Out of respect for Tony's wishes, I did not post trades or scan results. Tony does not want people to get the wrong impression that the scanner is a get-rich black box. I promised him that I will not discuss trades and results until there were more users of the scanner. At which point we can start a monthly thread to talk about how we traded one stock and how we missed the other. I think that would be great, and it will be more beneficial because the participants will be actual users of the scanner, so we can share more strategies on entry and exit. Tony: if we started a thread like that and named it "Tony Oz Scanner Users - October 2001" and go on to November etc., will you link to it from your website? I'd like to get as many users involved, so we get a broader approach, etc. It will also be great if you would participate. Bill