Other than experience, is there a way to increase my skills at timing the trades for day trading? I'm about 6 months in to my very unprofitable trading career and I keep executing the same issue... I'm picking the right stocks and buying, they end up correcting or reacting and hitting my stop loss at 3% and than shooting up so i "usually" miss out on the uptrend. is there any way to correct this? It happened twice to me today on ENPH and AMD
M
malaguti
Without trying to sound condescending but if you are regularly stopped at 3%, then continues up; what happens if you set your stop to 4%?
The other question is more why dont you try different stops?
Often the timing is not so important. If a stock is going to go up, it's going to go up regardless of how well you timed your entry. This is very much dependent on what your timeframe is however
The exit or stop is key. Too tight, you get your scenario and too loose you have higher drawdown. Test various scenarios would be my advice. Make sure also you are buying into an uptrend
The other question is more why dont you try different stops?
Often the timing is not so important. If a stock is going to go up, it's going to go up regardless of how well you timed your entry. This is very much dependent on what your timeframe is however
The exit or stop is key. Too tight, you get your scenario and too loose you have higher drawdown. Test various scenarios would be my advice. Make sure also you are buying into an uptrend
Maybe post a few charts and your analysis so people can get a feel for what you’re looking at. I am no means an expert but check out my thread for some of Fibo’s advice. Free. Read it. Do it and see how it plays out.
I am here if you want to talk any ideas over (I am not a pro, just interested in the markets)
I didn't find it condescending at all, thank you for your advice, that's what i hope/think these forums are for. I understand about dropping it to 4% but I was wondering what others trade at for their risk reward..everything I've been reading as a beginning trader was stating to set your stop losses and stick to them its better to lose a little money than a lot so I was wondering what other people set it at or what might be the Norm? for a correction or a reaction in a typical uptrending pattern because there is always some small pullbacks along the way (from what I'm noticing)
Thank you
I definitely will thank you
dbphoenix
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A percentage stop as such is not likely to be successful as the market doesn't know how much you're willing to risk and wouldn't care if it did. A more "market-wise" stop, in an uptrend, is the last swing low, reason being that this is the price at which buyers entered or re-entered the market and stopped the decline in price. If they choose not to do so again, this is information that you want. If the last swing low is too far away to be within your risk tolerance, don't take the trade.
Db
hatemypips
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Its called pyramiding it works but you have care about exit points too for each position because it becomes a mess if you close or hold them all.
Nowler
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I dont follow...
Would you have played this today? I did and lost again, i bought 1,000 shares at $8.56 and it went up but than came down... i got shaken out around the 20 day when it was at $6.86 a share for a loss of $1500 and than it shot up to over $13 a share! The volume was down and even though the overall market was up today thi particular stock was in a downtrend so when it started to shoot back down i figured the run was over..
dbphoenix
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What is your trading plan?
typically I would set my stop loss at 3% and would have sold at $8.31 but I was trying to broaden my risk tolerance to continue with the upswing because i kept repeating the same mistake over and over. I tried using the VWAP and moving Averages but when Im down $1000 on the day I sold, i was shooting for a 20% target price. It was up 15% on the morning volume tripled and a low float so I expected it to move and it did. the only thing I didn't take into consideration was teh ATR which was 2.76 until after the fact
I have no idea? what data should I have collected? I thought a 25% price increase with high volume low float and two green 5 minute bars over the vwap and moving averages was a good start ( clearly i was wrong)
dbphoenix
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In order to succeed at trading, you must have an edge. Your edge begins with the knowledge you gain through your research and testing that a particular market behavior offers a level of predictability that provides a consistently profitable outcome over time. To get it, you have to know exactly what you're looking for and what to do with it once you've found it.
Without a plan, you'll have no way of monitoring your performance beyond those swings between self-pity and self-congratulation. Without a plan, you'll never break out of the couldawouldashoulda trading session review, if you do such reviews at all (most just try to block the session out, or exercise their selective memory skills in the event that the session just happened to go well and persuade themselves that they are doing so much better than they really are).
Without a thoroughly-tested and consistently-profitable plan and the discipline to follow it, you will never be able to trade emotionlessly (and without such a plan, there's nothing to be disciplined about). Granted that with such a plan you will have to abandon that adrenaline rush that you may have been living for, but at some point this side of bankruptcy one must decide whether he values the rush more than making money. You'd be surprised how many people choose the former.
With a thoroughly-tested and consistently-profitable plan, if you follow it, trading will be much simpler, particularly as your plan will prevent you from taking trades you shouldn't be taking. Unless of course you ignore it. All the trading decisions will have been made ahead of time, so there are no chinks through which fear nor resentment nor anger nor any of the rest of it can insinuate themselves. All you'll have to do is trade.
Db
Without a plan, you'll have no way of monitoring your performance beyond those swings between self-pity and self-congratulation. Without a plan, you'll never break out of the couldawouldashoulda trading session review, if you do such reviews at all (most just try to block the session out, or exercise their selective memory skills in the event that the session just happened to go well and persuade themselves that they are doing so much better than they really are).
Without a thoroughly-tested and consistently-profitable plan and the discipline to follow it, you will never be able to trade emotionlessly (and without such a plan, there's nothing to be disciplined about). Granted that with such a plan you will have to abandon that adrenaline rush that you may have been living for, but at some point this side of bankruptcy one must decide whether he values the rush more than making money. You'd be surprised how many people choose the former.
With a thoroughly-tested and consistently-profitable plan, if you follow it, trading will be much simpler, particularly as your plan will prevent you from taking trades you shouldn't be taking. Unless of course you ignore it. All the trading decisions will have been made ahead of time, so there are no chinks through which fear nor resentment nor anger nor any of the rest of it can insinuate themselves. All you'll have to do is trade.
Db
could you educate me and help me learn a trading plan? I know different things work for different people but I would like to be able to implement a plan that can be tested! I'm just reading books and trying to see what works and clearly am not going down the right path
