- trail stop yourself if after your best hours you start to lose, just stop.. good advice earlier : continue with paper trade. you gain experience and smile at losses you avoid. - there are no fixed rules about hours.. sorry. it depends on your trading. if you do multiple time frames like I do, the trading change depending on the time of day. morning is probably best I agree. But noon is great too to take counter positions before trends resume in the afternoon. and last hour is great to square it out (or in actually). - analyze the trade you lose. that's the single best thing to do. there is a reason you blow out. it sounds systematic in your post. you can probably counter this (probably by changing your style after 11:00, or again, just quit). tntneo
i am new to the trading and has been doing ok, I guess. i only trade one stock a time. Since I am new, I only trade long. Look for stock daily possible range and like technical uptrend. enter at low bottom position with about 1/5 capital. If it is wrong, sell it and buy back lower, or add position. if the Market looks bad, get out all. Holding time can be minutes and hours depending on the trend of stock and Market. I guess the way I trade is called "position" trading. The week before Last week i gained $1300 average per day and last week only $180 per day due to bad market and a couple of mistakes, as holding shares overnight. I feel "position" trading had better have some investment knowledge of the particular stock though not necessary. i feel trading in minutes only work during open and early morning and late afternoon. Volume is high during the periods. Stock with no volume will not rally fast and may move up slowly with ups and downs. That zig-zag movement can easily shake out minute traders with loss.
>For the rest of the month I quit trading at 11:00 if I am up more than $200. If your best trading is done in the mornings, then bail at 11:00-12:00 no matter where you stand. Take what money the market offers and move on. This is key, as a "must have" goal can be deadly. What if you are up $180, and feel the need to get that last $20? Livermore said it best... "One of the most helpful things that anybody can learn is to give up trying to catch the last eighth or the first. These two are the most expensive eighths in the world. They have cost stock traders, in the aggregate, enough millions of dollars to build a concrete highway across the continent." >No deadzone trading no matter what. My favorite description of the mid day doldrums ...."The Bermuda triangle of trading". Stay clear unless you are fading the moves. Loads of fakeys and headshakes will be printed during this time. Go out and enjoy your lunch! >I'd like to put in a maximum daily loss as well, or the max number of bad trades When I was daytrading I kept to a three stop rule.. after taking 3 stops in any given day I'd stop trading. Look at your trading logs.. find the number of losers that shows you are out of tune with the market. (for me 3) and cut your self loose at that point. Now I'm position trading exclusively, and 90% of my trading is done before 11:00 est. Good Luck and Good Trading! -Bo
The slow period is when many opportunities arise in the listed market (since the brokers are often gone, and they leave only small portion of orders in "book")...but you have to be very selective. Look for the pairs, look for the "trade throughs" (my favorite is the 50 cent trade through and bounce back like in LEH on Thursday...twice!!). One problem with new traders is the "slot maching syndrome" - putting someone next to slot machine with a whole bucket of quarters and telling them not to play---except when they see an "edge" (edge only in trading, not in slots....as if you didn't know). Sorry for yet another "gaming" analogy, but I just returned from the AVI Indian Reservation in Laughlin NV (good blackjack game - made some $$).
>...didn´t Livermore also say that it was his "sitting" that made him money? Yep Babak.... "And right here let me say one thing: After spending many years in Wall Street and after making and losing millions of dollars I want to tell you this: It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It always was my sitting. Got that? My sitting tight! It is no trick at all to be right on the market. You always find lots of early bulls in bull markets and early bears in bear markets. I've known many men who were right at exactly the right time, and began buying or selling stocks when prices were at the very level, which should show the greatest profit. And their experience invariably matched mine -- that is, they made no real money out of it. Men who can both be right and sit tight are uncommon. I found it one of the hardest things to learn. But it is only after a stock operator has firmly grasped this that he can make big money. It is literally true that millions come easier to a trader after he knows how to trade than hundreds did in the days of his ignorance." -Reminiscences Of A Stock Operator
I decided to trade mornings only for the next two weeks. I will finish by 12:00EST at the latest, usually earlier. I'm going to post my results in this thread, pretty much just to be accountable to something and help me stick to it. My max loss for any one day is $300 before commissions. I should be able to make that up in one day. I don't think I'll even watch or paper trade deadzone/afternoon right now. My discipline is not quite good enough yet. After I can prove out my morning strategy, I will slowly develop a strategy for the afternoon. Thanks again to everyone for their input on this thread. Feel free to keep on giving. Monday: AMGN +114.10 BRCM -75.24 KLAC +350.45 NVDA +44.00 PSFT -72.00 SEBL +34.10 TOTAL +395.41 before commissions / +299 after Last trade closed at 11:23 ---Johnny
Decent start turned ugly. I actually got off easy for how bad I traded. Hot key mistake doubled down instead of stopping out on a short. Held the whole lot for a gain, but it was luck, not skill. Kept trying to play PSFT breakout and stopped out 3 times. It finally went for about .75 after I had given up on it. Caught most of the second breakdown of BRCM early but gave some back looking for a third. Violated my 12:00 rule already and made a losing trade at 12:38. Tuesday: AMGN +61.00 BRCM +162.40 PSFT -279.56 SEBL -47.40 VRSN -88.00 TOTAL -191.56 before commissions / -369.90 after Last trade closed at 12:42 ---Johnny
Don you said: "look for the "trade throughs" (my favorite is the 50 cent trade through and bounce back like in LEH on Thursday...twice!!). Can you tell me what you mean by this? Just want to make sure I am on the same page as you.... Leland
Trade throughs are covered in day one of our class (however, for my friends at ET) - When the Specialist has to fill a block trade trade away (negotitated price) from the current bid/offer - we call this a trade through - and play it accordingly. This is one of the big "edges" we "drill" into all the traders. We look for a move in one side of the quote, and dive in with a nickel or so better price order, hopefully getting filled. Also, we mean that we "envelope" current quotes to be ready for these events (which happen every day).