Aza did this to me 6 months ago when it was in the 70's. I no longer bother with glw. I just don't like aol as much now that it has merged. As for picking off specialists, I think im just going to stick with mo mainly. I used to take 2+ pts a day from him before decimalization, but decimals made it easier for him to hide his intentions. I was just screwing around on friday with 1k shares and i took over 2 pts from him, and only lost .2 on one loss. Im going to up it to 3k shares on monday and see if it was just dumb luck or if I can still read the bugger. It's bread and butter and you can only watch so many specialists at once. I noticed a quirk in PEP like 6 months ago, and I think im going to pick on him again and see if I still can. Too bad mcd is under 30 a share, that was my other beat on toy, and the one I used to learn to read specialists on. Basically im just looking for ideas as this market is just impossible for most anything else. I gave up on breakouts, and there don't seem to be many swing plays cause most stocks are now too low priced to make swinging worthwhile cause if a stock drops from 30-20, the most you can really take is 3 pts in a dead cat bounce, and that's not really worth it since it's way too dificult to time.
Kevin, You should only trade 100 lot shares for a very short while, because you can never really make money off those small amounts when you are scalping. The stock has to go up a whole point to make $100! Just do this until most of your trades are gains, then move up to 500 shares at least. If you have $20,000+ in your account, then the price has to go down a whole point before you lose $500, which is not a big deal. What kind of charts are you using? The futures are a good indicator of what the market is going to be doing, so those stocks you listed are good. Also check out CIEN, QCOM, INTC, AMAT, AMCC, and MSFT.
Pre I still trade breakouts but on an intraday timing. The market MUST be positive. This means a few minutes after the open look at CNBC are all of the 3 cash markets in the corner green? If not than no breakouts. I look at stocks near 52 week highs, large increase in volume, and stocks in the news Page on IBD. That usually give me an ample list to trade from. One point stop for some wiggle room after entry which it will prove by breaking previous day's high. After my profit goes to breakeven I take off half the position and trail the stop at breakeven. I then let it run. If a base forms that's my new stop. I've grabbed 3-4 points on green days doing this. I also just trade off of the news , boomers and busters (see Financial Freedom Through Electronic Daytrading) and play a stock for small scalping moves. Rtharp
Rtharp, the problem is that breakouts aren't working any more. In the past, worst case scenario, I would break it out myself if necessary. Look at mls. That was me who broke it out today. It upticked 17c and then just went into slow burn down and i took a decent loss. These things just dont have any buyers.
fwiw, my favorite trades are buying new 2-day high breakout longs, followed by shorting new 2-day breakdown longs. Eg XLNX traded in a 30-32 range yesterday, buy today on a breakout over 32.4, again over 33.4 type of trade. http://www.bigcharts.com/quickchart/quickchart.asp?symb=xlnx&sid=0&o_symb=xlnx&freq=6&time=2 Also, trading within a 2-day intraday range works, though these aren't as powerful as breakout/breakdown trades. And, I like to trade primarily from 9:40-11am, only on a rare occasion will I trade after lunch. Ken http://www.Daytrading-University.com
My .02: You need better secondary confirmation to your setups. My reco, get charting s/w with Williams %R, & use like stochastics (>90=OB, <10=OS)- it is the fastest leading indicator. Get setup confirmation on the next higher time level, & pull the trigger user the next lower (faster) time frame. Lok for 2 or 3 chart (time frame) alignment. Also support & resistance. I also reco learmning candle sticks. They give very early signals too, on any time frame. Candles are not very reliable under 15 min bars tho (then again, what is), but still help find the trend but are best at finding reversals. Also stick to something less crazy, like INTC. Get to know that one stock, then spread out. Good luck, Pack
it sure would be nice if we would have more threads like these. I've been searching the site and the older posts have more meat to them. Somebody asks for help and gets it
If you're using volume spikes as a secondary, confirming indicator, here is something that I like to do. What I do is compute the average volume accumulation at different intervals throughout the day. What I mean by this, say the average 30 day volume is 1,000,000 shares a day. So given that average, and with a 6.5 hour trading day, by second hour we should be trading on pace of ~308,000 shares (you could make this more complex by calculating on a nonlinear basis e.g. assuming more shares traded at the beginning, etc). If the stock spikes on the second hour, but is well under its normal pace, the move isn't as strong relative to previous days. Depending upon how far under the average, you may not want to enter. And just the opposite, if the stock is outpacing its average, and there's a volume spike off the bounce, jump on it. ;-) Over time, hopefully this will demonstrate to you that not all volume spikes are equal. The spikes should be compared relative to previous accumulation.