There is a lot of garbage out there clamoring for your dollars. This seems especially true in the area of trading. Everyone’s paid service will make you more money than the next. For every decent service there are 100 others that are completely useless. This is why it’s nice when you can find useful services that are provided absolutely free.
In “10 Ways to Build a Better Watch List” I described some steps you might take to find stocks to trade before the market opens. The following is a list of free resources that will help you through that process.
Briefing.com
Briefing.com is [...]
From the monthly archives:
September 2009
The market doesn’t care if you’re a bear or a bull. It doesn’t care if you think it’s oversold or undervalued. It doesn’t care about your fundamental analysis or your charting skills. The market will do what the market will do, with or without you. You are not in control.
Accept It
One of the worst things you can do is a trader is to start to feel like you’ve lost control of the market. You should never feel that way because you never had control in the first place. You can have all the indicators in the world telling you to [...]
Contrary to popular belief, day trading is all about losing. Winning is great, but it’s how you deal with the losses that will define you as a trader. If you can learn from every trade, win or lose, I can almost guarantee you will succeed in your trading endevours.
Better Trades
The first thing you should focus on is making better trades. Hold the winners longer, and cut the losers quicker. This approach will ensure that you become profitable long before you get your win/loss ratio positive. Even with a low risk/reward ratio of 1/2, you can lose twice as many times [...]
Last week, First Solar (FSLR) ran up significantly on news of a large deal for a solar power plant in China. The second day of the run was highlighted in my post about Opening Gap Reversals. That day saw a huge run up early in the morning and a slow burn back down to its opening price which formed the Long-Legged Doji in the stock chart above.
Long-Legged Doji
The long-legged doji is a specific form of the standard doji. While the doji signifies indecision, the long-legged doji shows that a deeper and more extended battle occurred between the bears and the [...]
I discussed the standard opening range breakout in my last post. Now I want to talk about a variation of the Opening Range Breakout . It’s called the Opening Gap Reversal
The Play
The chart above shows the opening range reversal that occurred when First Solar (FSLR) failed to fill its gap today. The standard mantra of traders is that gaps fill more often than not. I don’t know how true that is, but I do know lots of people believe that it’s true.
What happens when the market proves a lot of people wrong? You get a range breakout. The idea of [...]
The Opening Range Breakout is one of the simplest day trading set-ups to understand. The first hour of the trading day is the most volatile. Bears and bulls are battling it out in the stock market, trying to show you who’s going to be the boss for the day. This volatility creates a price-range you can trade from. Like all breakout trading set-ups, this is a great set-up because it offers a very low risk entry. If there is no follow-through on the opening range breakout, you should exit the trade immediately.
The Time-Frame
You are looking for opening range breakouts to [...]
