Day trading tips?
Don’t bash day trading or I will report you, not kidding – I don’t care if think day trading is a gamble.
OK first read this before you report it … chuckle.
Day trading IS a gamble. I know because I day trade, successfully.
Your two responders are not traders.
First if you use stops, you will many times get stopped out before it turns right around. I would have happened to me on LEH on Tues. I took a very nice profit.
Second you HAVE to have NASDQA Level 2 quotes. *this is how I knew NOT to get out of LEH on Tues. I got caught in a bid/ask spread that was to wide with a thin bid.
You have to see the whole market. You have to know that there are many buyers or sellers. Level 2 gives you that look.
Third take small nibbles. My goal is $300 to $500 a day. I leave a lot on the table.. but I am usaually in and out first 1/2 hour of trading.
I am in and out because day trading in many ways is like gambling and either you control the beast of the beast eats you alive. You can easily become a servant to the adrenalin rush Do that and you begin trading because you have to trade, not that there are good trades to be made.
Timing is everything. You will need to learn when a market order is prudent and when you need to use limits.
I bought 500 V today at about 59 .. I had to leave so I put in a limit to sell at 61. I thought that would give me time to come back and watch. LOL. It went to 61 and I was out. Now do I wish I had made more? Not really because I netted just shy of $1000 for the day.
That brings me to another thing. Day trading is a FULL time job. You can’t expect to put in an order and then go to work. My full time may only be the first 30 minutes to an hour of trading but I don’t leave the computer in that time.
The day IBM announced the buy back, I had thought I would be a buyer at 109.. I had to go to the bathroom. I hadn’t put in the buy ( it was trading at 108.50 so I would have been filled. Three minutes later it was trading at 114 because of the announcement.
I rarely do like I did today and even rarer is holding a position over night. Particularly in this market. Up 400 down 200 up 300 etc.
Good luck and good trading
October 29th, 2009 at 7:48 am
1. Close out your account at the end of each day.
2. Never fight the trend. Even if the trend doesn’t make any sense. You can’t fight the trend.
3. Use a stop loss order, which will sell your stock if it drops to a certain amount.
Also, go to the library and read everything you can get your hands on for this topic.
Good luck.
References :
October 29th, 2009 at 7:55 am
Why would anyone bash day trading. I just told a friend of mine who is new to trading that it might be best to only day trade, because we really have no idea what this crazy market is going to do from day to day.
My best tip now is to just wait for one of these really bad days when the market is down a lot, and then the next day, buy one third of what you want to actually buy. And then see if the market is going to have one of those crazy rebound days like today. And if it goes way up, you’ve made some money. And if it goes down a lot again, then you might want to spend another third of your money that you had intended to spend. Spend it in stocks that went down a lot, but seemed to be carried down with the rest. You’ll still have one third of your money left. And the way it’s been going, it might just rebound on the fourth day, a lot. And you will have averaged down your price. That’s just one tip.
Right now, I own a bit of GS. And if I didn’t, I wouldn’t buy any tomorrow, since it just went up. But if it goes down again, I’d buy it, because it is just being pulled down by all of those other brokers. My broker told me today, and he had no ulterior motives, that GS was bulletproof. I tend to agree. It certainly won’t hurt you to watch this stock.
References :
October 29th, 2009 at 8:13 am
OK first read this before you report it … chuckle.
Day trading IS a gamble. I know because I day trade, successfully.
Your two responders are not traders.
First if you use stops, you will many times get stopped out before it turns right around. I would have happened to me on LEH on Tues. I took a very nice profit.
Second you HAVE to have NASDQA Level 2 quotes. *this is how I knew NOT to get out of LEH on Tues. I got caught in a bid/ask spread that was to wide with a thin bid.
You have to see the whole market. You have to know that there are many buyers or sellers. Level 2 gives you that look.
Third take small nibbles. My goal is $300 to $500 a day. I leave a lot on the table.. but I am usaually in and out first 1/2 hour of trading.
I am in and out because day trading in many ways is like gambling and either you control the beast of the beast eats you alive. You can easily become a servant to the adrenalin rush Do that and you begin trading because you have to trade, not that there are good trades to be made.
Timing is everything. You will need to learn when a market order is prudent and when you need to use limits.
I bought 500 V today at about 59 .. I had to leave so I put in a limit to sell at 61. I thought that would give me time to come back and watch. LOL. It went to 61 and I was out. Now do I wish I had made more? Not really because I netted just shy of $1000 for the day.
That brings me to another thing. Day trading is a FULL time job. You can’t expect to put in an order and then go to work. My full time may only be the first 30 minutes to an hour of trading but I don’t leave the computer in that time.
The day IBM announced the buy back, I had thought I would be a buyer at 109.. I had to go to the bathroom. I hadn’t put in the buy ( it was trading at 108.50 so I would have been filled. Three minutes later it was trading at 114 because of the announcement.
I rarely do like I did today and even rarer is holding a position over night. Particularly in this market. Up 400 down 200 up 300 etc.
Good luck and good trading
References :