Tag Archives for daytrading

Find a second income with day trading

Investors who know what they are doing are always looking for ways to make money. It is practically an American institution. But there’s a basis why they dub it a plot, which characteristically means a deceitful or covert arrangement of action. The simple fact is that most schemes that promise to make you millions with day trading, most likely have about as much success as spinning roulette wheel. Ya, it is correct that many day trading systems are few more that informed gambling, but they are gambling all the same. Day trading itself is a form of gambling, as you are betting you can time the stock to enter and exit in a few minutes or seconds with a profit.

 

What will it take to make a good day trade? To begin with, you need to understand that there is no such thing as easy money. You should not approach day trading with the expectation you will make millions. Day trading is all about making small profits several times a day which eventually add up. A day trader that know what their doing will proceed quite cautiously on any particular day trade. Instead, they buy small numbers of shares of companies that they’re familiar with.

How do day traders know which stocks to trade? Most commonly, traders will choose stocks that they are familiar with. After reviewing all the numbers and watching them for weeks at a time, a trader may eventually gain the confidence to start trading a stock.

Though there are a number of different strategies that day traders employ, most day trading strategies rely heavily on technical analysis. Technical stock analysis means that traders believe that he can detect patterns in the way a stock trades by looking at charts. Most days you may discover a certain stock will move in a tight trading range. This might mean that a stock only moves a few points a day. For instance, it may open the day at 33, move up to 36, and end the day at 34. It is the job of the day trader to keep tabs on these trades and see if he can discern a predictable pattern in these daily movements.Learning to watch and pay attention to these types of regular volatility patterns will really pay off in the long term for anyone looking to day trade.The real key is to try to concentrate on just a few select stocks in the beginning so that you do not go down the path of information overload.

This strategy may seem a bit simplistic, but it is a proven winner. A basic requirement is that a trader take a few stocks, watch closely each day, and try to become an expert at them. It won’t take very long before the trader will feel able to take on making a day trade. While this approach probably will not help you to become rich overnight, you should be able to earn some profit numerous times throughout each day, which can add up to a significant income over time. It isn’t unusual for day traders to trade the exact same stock over a hundred times each day.  This is because they believe they have discovered the secret to the successful day trade and that the more they trade the more they will make.

 

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Learn To Trade From A Day Trading Robot

Once you have learned the basics of trading, it comes down to how many quality ideas you can find during a trading day.  Some people subscribe to chat rooms with other traders, some people like to watch real time news, and others like to program computers to scan the market or use a day trading robot to help them find ideas in real time to make money.

One of the advantages of using a day trading robot is that it is completely unbiased in its ability to find the same patterns over and over.  The real key is finding a day trading robot that is reliable in its stock picks and is easy to use.This is of course no easy feat, because there are a ton of impostors and stuff that used to work but now is of little use because the market changed but the robot was not able to adapt.

One key component of any day trading robot that should be essential is the ability to find stuff in real time, but give you enough time to actually act on the information it provides.It is of no help to use a day trading robot that scalps stuff so fast that you cannot even get an order in if you wanted to follow it.You can always choose to let a day trading robot have control of your account, but a lot of traders are uncomfortable with this type of situation and like to keep control.In addition, there are always things each day that require human intervention because a day trading robot is not designed to handle that situation.

Overall, anyone looking to use a day trading robot to help find ideas should realize the limitations and the fact that it should only be used as a tool to enhance a traders own judgement and trading prowess.It is fantasy land to expect a trading robot to be right 90-95% of the time, or for it to make 40% every month in your account.  I can tell you 100% anyone who has such a tool would never sell it or lease it out - they would be living on a private island off the wealth it creates daily.In order to get the maximum benefit from using a day trading robot, you need to have realistic expectations for performance.

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Identify The Trend On A Chart

An odd thing happens if you put up a stock price chart and ask a bunch of people what the trend is.  Even when its completely obvious to someone like me, as in not any question at all, you will still get many different answers based on the exact same chart.  This stems from many people not knowing the proper method to actually find the trend on a chart.  It is actually quite simple, and is a key thing to know if you want to learn to trade.

The first thing to do is to size the chart properly.  There is no point of putting up 5 years of data if you are looking for a daytrade to hold for 5 minutes - that is completely pointless.  So here is a guide for what you need as far as time loaded on a chart:

Daytrade:

  1. 1 min chart:  Have at least 2 hours of data (120 bars) on the screen but no more than 6 hours (1 full day).
  2. 2 to 5 min chart: Make sure you have at least 3 hours of data up, but no more than 2 days.
  3. 10-15 min chart:  Have at least 3 days of data up, but no more than 1 week.

Swing Trades (longer term hold) you will want a 10 to 30 minute chart up and you will want at least 10 days of data up on the screen.

You will want to make sure you are using a "bar chart" style of chart, and not "candlestick" or other types.  This is easier to see the trend.Start by looking for every V bottom area.  Anytime there is a low with a V bounce, make note of it.  In addition, look for / top areas where it spikes up then sells off.Focus in on the major ones where it moves significantly away from that area in a short period of time.Next you will want to get your charting draw tool and connect the V to each other V you see.Connect the / to each other /.Connect the low areas on the V, and then the highs of the /.  Again, this is a key to learn how to trade.

Lines that slope from the lower left up to the right means the stock is in an uptrend.  Lines that slope from the upper left down to the right means the stock is in a downtrend.Another easy method: Go to the first bar on the left, and then to the very last price on the right hand side.  Draw a line between the two.  If the line is sloping up - its an uptrend.if the line is sloping down to the right, then the trend is a downtrend.  The other key thing to look at is the oscillations around this trendline.Does it go up and down 2pts, up and down 1pt, up and down .50 etc - remember, all that is needed is a rough average, not an exact number.This gives you a decent sense of the trend strength.  The lower the oscillation, the stronger the trend.The thinking here is that the price hardly oscillates because the buyers in an uptrend chase is up and bid, and the sellers in a downtrend chase it down and offer so it does not really counter move much.

Another thing to keep in mind the more you practice, the faster it gets - the lines are no longer necessary.I can glance at a chart and know the trend and approximate strength within seconds.Additionally, you really need to know the trend direction and strength on the next higher timeframe than you are trading on.  For example, on a 5 minute chart the trend might be up, but on a 15 minute chart it is still down.  This needs to be paid attention to, because the longer term trend can push the shorter term trend back into a downtrend.Overall, you want your higher term chart to be a time multiple of about 3 from the chart you intend to trade.  So if you are on a 1 min chart, you watch the 3 min chart also, if on a 5 min chart, you watch the 15 min chart.  Once you can easily tell the trend of any chart, other aspects of learning to trade become much easier.

 

 

 

 

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Theories On The Market

A funny thing has happened in the last 6-8 weeks.There appears to be very little sellers present.  Literally.  The market has made a massive push and it really struggles to sell or stay down.It seems almost funny now how difficult it is to short anything for more than maybe 20 minutes or more.As most traders find out - fighting the market is pointless, all you can do is react to what you are given.This action sure makes trading hard, the guys that are really getting the most out of it are the buy and hold.

One thing I know is that no matter what these guys do that are chasing and then bidding the market so it does not sell - it will sell eventually.  The only way you actualy make money, whether day trading or longer term investing, is to  lock in profits.  Until then its just a fantasy.  At some point they will tip the tide to the point where a majority are actually fearful of losing gains and then the selling is real.

A favorite pattern lately has been to break down below a support (or even key support) and then out of nowhere a massive burst of buying comes in to rescue the market.This sort of thing happens so often now, its completely expected.Most of the time this results in a new low being made, followed shortly by new daily highs as the buyers chase like crazy.

Even in the height of the bull market, we would repeatedly have 10-15+% corrections in the market that would last a month or so.   And this was when everything was just perfect (or everyone thought so).  So I am not sure what is going on now.  Several theories are in play that I think about:

  1. Shorts are completely or mostly out of the market.  The SEC messing with the short rules before caused a panic, and now there are many proposals again in regard to uptick rule and shorting.  Rather than get caught, they are staying away from day trading and longer term positioning.
  2. The level of manipulation appears high.  There is a group of large banks or funds that are pushing the market higher at the Fed's and Treasuries request to try to turn the economy out of the recession by making it appear as if the stock market has it figured out.The way the market always rescues itself from the brink of disaster, the ramps into the close every friday, and other odd trading action gives this one some credibility.  Would be easy for the government to just give these guys money to push the market up.
  3. Traders all gone, algo's take over.  This one can happen as well - computers have taken over more of the futures trading which drives the market.Since no one tries to fight this trend, with all of them doing the same thing it just feeds on itself.  This one I like too because the actual variance of price during the rally pushes is actually uncharacteristically low most of the time.I have seen the DJIA futures push up almost 100pts in 20 minutes with hardly a retrace at all, even at the high.Of course this type of thing has happened before, but not nearly as often as it does now on a daily basis.

Whether any of these are true, or a combination, I have no idea and we may never.  All I know is the trading action is very odd and I expect at least half if not more of this gain to be gone when this is done.  Note - I am not predicting a top, I am saying that when this is done, these idiots will undo this much faster than it actually ran up as everyone heads for the exits.The market could hit 9.000 or 10,000 etc.I relaly do not see 10,000 as possible right now, because GM, C and a few others are dead - they just don't have the fuel short term.

Maybe everyone just needs to learn to trade again - this is the new market to stay!

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