A Nudge In The Right Direction

Thomas2Trade

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Hello, All!

My name is Tom, and I'm a 56 year old man in the US, and I've flirted with the idea of trading with a small percentage of my portfolio. Right now I have about a $100K investment portfolio, mostly invested in a momentum-based ETF Tactical Allocation Strategy (taken from the book "Muscular Portfolios") that have done very well for me. I'm looking to take a small percentage of my portfolio and trade a bit more actively. I've looked into this before, and when you look for ideas online, or look for good books about trading, there is a lot of chaff with the wheat. I'd like to list a few things that I'm hoping to do, and ask if anyone can steer me in the right direction to begin this project. I appreciate any advice you can offer!

So, here are some elements of my dream trading system:

1) Instruments traded (at least to start): Equities and ETF's (The leverage involved in options are daunting to me as a beginner, and "spread betting," "binary options" and "contracts for difference" strike me as being more like gambling than investing--basically placing a bet on which way an asset will go with no real ownership (if this is an incorrect statement, I'd love to hear about it, and why) ;-)

2) As I currently work throught the stock market hours, I would need to have a plan that I could work mainly outside of market hours--perhaps I could place trades or check in on a break or lunch hour, but most of the heavy lifting would have to be done outside market hours.

3) Time invested: I'm aware that this would take a time commitment, but for the most part I would love to be able to begin, practice, and ultimately implement the plan in 30-45 minutes per day. The wife and kids like to see me occasionally! ;-)

4) Trading Style: Either swing trading on daily charts, or short-medium term trend following (I would consider momentum strategies as well). I conside what I'm currently doing to be a form of position trading, and I'd love to be able to be a bit more active in my trading with this system.

5) I would like to be able to start small--with paper trading, and then perhaps with a small amount of capital, and then perhaps grow my trading position as I get better at it.

I have begun reading the introductory information on the forum, but just wanted to see if there were any suggestions out there. I'm don't expect a "do these steps exactly" answer, but would love a nudge in the right direction (and if that nudge is, "you're being totally unrealistic, Tom, what you are looking for above simply doesn't exist," I'm open to hearing that too. I appreciate any thoughts which you may be able to share with me!

Thanks!

Tom
 
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