1- Do you follow and trade certain stocks every day? How do you trade them? what do you look for to meet your requirement 2- Do you use stock scans to find certain setup ( i.e. like 2days breakouts, support , resistance...etc)?. Thank you all HKTrader
HKTrader, Here is a link to a really neat site that might answer all your questions: www.elitetrader.com Check it out. voodoo
Sorry about my sarcasm or yours Yet, if you are serious, you obviously just starting in the business of "active trading". Here's my recommendation, click above on the "Books" link to see if there are some good books you can buy, read and learn. If you can't decide on which books...ask members here which books they actually own and use. During your learning process, find something "your comfortable" with based on your personality...your personality will have a big influence on your success or failure...arguably more than anything else. Then come back in a few months or longer and click on Software (to get better software than the one your currently using) and Broker above. After you've gotten a trading software you like and a broker you like. Test your trading system with a small amount of capitol. Don't "paper trade" because it lacks the emotion and your reaction when you have REAL money in the market. Note: If you can't afford a good trading software, good books and other education materials besides your own experience...then you can't afford to trade...something a lot of newbies don't understand. After you've done all the above...if your having problems with something "specific"...come back and ask questions and many members will be more helpful instead of being sarcastic. Nihaba Ashi
Buy low sell high, sell high buy low....lather rinse repeat. If your losing stop, if your winning load the boat.
Most of our successful traders only trade a few stocks, become very proficient at reading how they trade, and then move to more advanced trading strategies (pairs, mergers, etc.). By sticking with a few stock you will not be "blindsided" by unexpected activity (very often, anyway), and you will become a "surrogate specialist" of sorts. A few of our people use filters and other scanning techniques to seek out breakouts and breakdowns, intraday volatility breaks, etc., but only after they have their bread and butter stocks working well for them (paying the bills, making some $$).
I can only agree with Don. Select a small number of equities and become proficient in trading them. These will be your "bread and butter" stocks before moving on to anything else. The key things to do are: 1) Select the strategy, market, and create a plan of how to trade. 2) Select a pool of 10 or less stocks from a larger pool of equities that best fit the strategy. Do research / backtesting / paper trading to validate the fit. 3) Start trading the selected equities in small volume per the constraints of your strategy. Prove what you are doing works and then up the volume. Only trade NASDAQ stocks not the listed stuff (just kidding Don). - Greg
Two resources which will give you a good idea of day trading strategies are: 1 Trading Systems and Methods By Perry Kaufman . Read the chapter on Day Trading (pages 419 to 435) and Pattern Recognition (pages 383 to 418). All most all trading strategies I have seen day trader using are variation of techniques discussed in these two chapters. 2 Street Smarts By Linda Raschke and Connors. Using this book you can develop many strategies which work in short time frame.