There are so many secrets to day trading, it’s hard to keep track of them all. Lucky for you, I’ve honed these down into the top 4 day trading secrets.
Secret #4 – What You Do When the Market is Closed Matters Most
Sure, it’s great to be able to interpret data at lightning speeds, spot valid trades within seconds, and execute them flawlessly, but without proper preparation, you will never find those opportunities. Proper preparation includes spending up to an hour before the market opens sifting through market scanners, reading news feeds, and watching pre-market trading. It also includes some time [...]
Posts tagged as:
day trading
Last time, I talked about my goal to day trade for a living; now let’s talk about what might really be required of someone who is day trading for a living.
First of all you need capital. You can paper trade all day, but unless you’ve actually got money invested in the market, you can’t very well make a living at it can you? If you’re day trading for a living, you’re going to be buying and selling stocks all day, and this is going to require quite a bit of capital. If you’re day trading full-time you’re going to be [...]
My ultimate goal is to be day trading for a living. Some of you are aware that I am not a full-time trader, but I trade pretty regularly, and I do research almost daily whether or not I trade. I used to even engage in the social aspects of trading, like chat rooms, forums, and Stocktwits, but I stopped all of that social stuff to focus on things that would allow me to focus on that ultimate goal of day trading for a living.
Late last year, a series of occurrences in my life caused me to revaluate what I was [...]
We’ve discussed the opening range breakout before, or it least what it takes to make for a successful breakout trade, but we never really covered the basics. That’s because there are a million websites where you could receive this information, but I might as well add my own two cents. The opening range breakout is often misunderstood because, like many things in day trading, they appear simple on the surface but are actually fairly difficult to trade. There are a lot of factors that must be accounted for and a new trader simply does not have the experience to take these [...]
You seem to think chart analysis is a lot more difficult than it really is. Instead of giving it a go on your own, you rely on the wisdom of us brilliant chartists to hand you money-making set-ups on your favorite stocks.
I am here to tell you, friend, that it’s not that difficult to do some basic technical analysis on your own. Let’s take a walk through the basics, shall we?
Connect the Pointy Bits
On a stock chart, you have peaks and troughs. In order to identify the trend of a stock, you simply find these peaks and troughs and connect [...]
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 [...]
I had quite a morning day trading today. The following is a transcript of my Tweets sent via Stocktwits as I traded RIMM. Since it all happens so fast, it is difficult to really give followers a picture of what I’m actually thinking, so below I’ve added what I was thinking at the time, and since I am not very smart, I have added what I assume a more prudent trader may have been thinking in the same situation.
The trading day started a little rough, and some guy prosed the following question;
9:44 am – “$SPY how do u day trade when [...]
A better day trading watch list means better trades, and better trades mean bigger profits.
The stock market is a busy place. If you don’t have a focused watch list you’ll flip from stock to stock without stopping to make a trade. To maximize your profits, spend at least 30 minutes sorting out a watch list prior to the market open. Here are 10 quick tips to help you find the best stocks to day trade.
1. Keep It Small
There are thousands of stocks. Narrow your list down to 10-20 potential movers. You can’t possibly watch 100 or more stocks, so don’t bother trying. [...]
As promised today on Twitter via StockTwits, here’s a recap of the FSLR day trade taken this morning.
This trade was a result of the stock market in general being seriously downtrodden today along with this particular stock’s push to close the gap feeling especially weak. I watched the tape to get a feel for how this one would react to yesterday’s low, and it just didn’t appear to have the ability to push through it (as a matter of fact, it reversed a few cents lower than the actual PDL).
Entry
As indicated on my day trading chart to the left here, [...]
You can’t win if you’re just trying to break even.
When day trading, have you ever taken profits sooner than you should because it made up for your losses the previous day? Have you ever increased your position size or the amount of risk you take on “temporarily” just to get back to zero? Yeah? Me too.
What is Break Even Mentality?
Break Even mentality is that itch in the back of your brain that tells you “If you can just break even on this trade, then you’re back at zero. It’s a fresh start.” It could cause you to exit a trade [...]
Day trading can present some great opportunities. I posted yesterday about day trading a down market. Some days just have the potential to be very profitable for day traders. Here’s a brief overview of some specific day trades that could have been grabbed.
Research in Motion (RIMM)
RIMM opened well below yesterdays low. It made a very weak attempt to close the gap down from yesterday. When that failed, it was all down hill.
1. Arrow 1 shows where RIMM broke through its low of the day (LOD) here. It was a pretty easy short trade down to the whole number at 70.00
2. [...]
When they talk about “making money whether the stock market is going up or down,” this is the type of down day they’re talking about. I guess it’s unfortunate that this signals some weakness in the stock market (at least short-term), but we might as well profit off of the stock market’s failure.
When my stock charts showed the huge gap down from Fridays close, it became fairly obvious which way the stock market was headed. The fact that the market didn’t even attempt to close the gap confirmed it. We were headed down. I figured at the very least we’d [...]
“You can become a millionaire
by trading just two hours a day!”
You’ve heard this sales pitch before and it sounds pretty awesome, doesn’t it? You could just roll out of bed right before the market opens, pick a couple of popular stocks, make one or two easy trades, and get on with your day well before noon.
Well, the good news is that it is possible to live the life of a leisurely day trader. However, here’s the part most new traders don’t want to hear; it takes hours a day and years of hard work to become trader of that caliber.
If [...]
