A few EZ trades. Not trying to force anything. Just letting th emarkets say when to enter, when to exit. Taking what is offered.ERX short
ERX cover
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Some bread and butter trades
A few EZ trades. Not trying to force anything. Just letting th emarkets say when to enter, when to exit. Taking what is offered.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
The Power of Now and using a new highs/lows ticker
Instead of worrying about what the future holds or being affected by what the past did to you, a trader will find it useful and beneficial to always operate as close to the now moment as possible.
As a day trader I would not be very effective if I looked at a bunch of charts the night before and read pages of commentary about which way the markets are headed. The time spent doing that is much more valuable to me to sit in quiet reflection and examine my inner self and prepare for anything to happen at anytime. This is living in the now moment.
War could break out or peace could break out. A new drug to cure everything is discovered or dandelion juice could be discovered to cure everything. An important world leader could get assassinated or politicians could be declared unnecessary. How could you know all of those things. You can't. How can you prepare for all those things. You can and easily too. There are usually two sides to every story and it pays to be ready with the mental acuity in order to be flexible and take whatever that comes. Thinking that you know what the markets will do and holding fast to that idea while the markets are playing out some other way will lead to disaster.
To get into the now moment I use what is called a hitting new highs and lows ticker. It scrolls in realtime so I don't have to use future thought or rely on conjecture to wonder what will happen. I can see in realtime as any stock is making new highs or lows as it happens. This gives me a huge advantage and jump over traders who have some preconceived notion in their minds on what a particular stock will. I can see it. I can act on it in either direction if it continues to rise or falters.
To see my indicator in action click here http://www.vimeo.com/9220589
Your eye can get quickly trained to see blocks of a stock making new highs or in this case lows. I have this linked so that if I click on any symbol, the charts for that symbol come up. I then check volume and the spread. If it is suitable, then I can enter it at that moment.
Virtually all of my trades come this way to me. For instance if a stock is trending higher making new highs, then pulls back, I can set an alarm just under the previous high so that I am notified that it may break out again, or not, if it is exhausted.
Having your mindset in the now opens you up to accept what is happening in front of your eyes. You can discard the being right or being wrong in prognosticating the market and all the mental tricks that will play on your psyche. The now and momentum can be your greatest ally.
Friday, January 21, 2011
FFIV overnight hold
AFter covering the monster short yesterday I reckoned a bounce was more likely to happen than it falling more.FFIV entry
FFIV exit
DDS overnight hold
I can offer you no logical reason why I shorted DDS at the top other than I thought retail is not strong and whoever is pushing this thing up is full of shit.Anyway it turned out to be a good short,
DDS entry
DDS exit this morning. Still looks weak...
Thursday, January 20, 2011
FFIV and other swing shorts
I'm not a swing trader but sometimes conditions suggest it is a good thing to do. It was the AAPL announcement a couple days and the resulting price action I saw that made me put a bunch of short term shorts on. My view that other stocks that marched up incessantly with AAPL would falter a bit. FFIV , CRM, POT, SNDK, NFLX. ALso watch the ETFs TZA, VXX, FAZ. TNA. Take that for what it's worth.
Here is FFIV taking a trip from $141 down to $107. I’ll take profits here.
cover FFIV
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Pullback play NVDA
After buying near the top and getting stopped out for a small lose a candle earlier, I reentered NVDA on the pullback when I saw green.sold NVDA on the big pop.
this stock is in play at the moment.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Developing your mental discipline and toughness.
First of all stop thinking that greatness and ease while trading lies in finding the next Holy Grail indicator. It doesn't. Frankly the fewer indicators you use the better off you’ll be. Price action is the be all end all for me. An uncluttered mind is free to apply a system and go with the flow of the markets. Simple is better!
The holy grail of trading is when your mind is rooted in discipline. That means you can do the right action at the right time unaffected by external or internal factors. Unflinchingly applying your system, playing the probabilities, looking at both sides of a trade, not celebrating wins, not moaning about loses and beating yourself up, not reliving bad habits time and again when you ought to know better.
To gain discipline, I believe it is necessary to actively exercise your mind power. This can become the bedrock of an entirely new you. If you are currently having trouble and find yourself wallowing in an emotional battlefield, take a step back and work on the mental aspects of trading before you blow out your account.
Lets start with some housekeeping. Stop the time wasters be they gadgets or people. Perhaps it’s necessary to regress back in your life and throw out the junk that is negatively impacting you. Your thoughts on winning, losing, being wrong, being right, self worth, hard work vs easy work just to name a few may hold the key to get you over to the consistent winning traders side. You need quiet reflection and to examine in depth the real reasons behind your stupidity. I’ll call it stupidity for lack of a better word because if you find yourself doing the same things over and over that self sabotage your other efforts to achieve something, it is plain old fashioned stupidity. All we are here to do is to interpret the candles or whatever you use to place your entries. Letting many other wayward thoughts and feelings intrude into this process is what we can strive to eliminate. Getting rid of or reconciling with these ideas to the point that you recognize they are a part of you but not letting them interfere with your intended actions is an achievable goal if you work at it. Start with a clean and clear mental space to construct the new you. All this is leading to singleness of purpose and thought patterns. Your mind is an ultra powerful tool that can hatch an idea and carry it out through hard work and dedication, if you let it. Having a definitive goal lets you have a point to focus your thoughts to like a bullseye target.
If you have read some of my other articles you will know that each morning as I wake up, I visualize many of the typical trading patterns that make up my edge/system. Breaks to new highs or lows, dojis, selling into strength, waiting for pops or pullbacks to enter or exit. I don’t know what the trading day will bring, but by doing this I am availing myself to see the conditions that will be profitable to me before they happen. I don’t know when they will happen, only that they will sometime during the day. I am prepared. I have seen that probabilities play themselves out to my benefit out when I act on them. I also cover the downside as part of my system in case they do not work out that particular time. This doesn’t take more than 5 or 10 minutes while still laying in bed yet is vital to my success.
Here is how I practice: As I close my eyes, in my minds eye I see the chart pattern, the candlestick colours, the volume bars. Zero in on each minute detail. Examine it from right side up, upside down, side to side. Get right in amongst the candles and look around in 3D. During this process I keep focus on the task at hand. If my mind drifts, I bring it back like I would a dog on a leash trying to sniff the next fire hydrant. Always come back to my goal. Clear everything else from my mind.
You can also start with some simpler exercises if you like. Visualize letters of the alphabet one at a time. Count how many you can see in your minds eye before some other thought intrudes. As you get more advanced, flip them over side to side, top to bottom, see them as they reverse, make them thick or thin. Add a light in the corner of your picture for a reflection. Change background colours. Keep focused on your goal. Let nothing interfere. It will take practice to be able to do this. As you work on it day by day you will get better. It’s like any other muscle that you exercise.
As an exercise when you go to bed, close your eyes and see in your minds eye a white movie screen. Imagine all the things that you would change in the future to become the person you want to. Imagine doing, having, saying and playing a mental movie of the new you. Being the best you that you can be. Revel in the joy of being in control of your life. It’s not just about the money, it’s being content with your life if you are not currently so.
Change that mental movie screen into a pen and paper. In your minds eye write down positive affirmations about yourself in your own handwriting. “ I am ready” “I am an excellent trader” “ I always follow my plan” “ I can do this” for example. See the script as you write it. See the letters appear. Hear the pen on paper. Reinforce the positive aspect at all times. Training your brain takes hard work but it is very rewarding. You will find other areas of your life will improve not just trading. This is all about being happy and doing what you want to do. After a while you will find that visualizing the charts is easy, that instantly taking the positive outlook on events makes you mentally stronger.
Having gotten a bit of discipline in this way now paves the road forward towards a much more rewarding future. Work at it , never give up, achieve your goal and it is something that will stay with you throughout your life. I don’t care what level of education is or what your upbringing was. IF you desire real change in your life it must be worked at little by little. It won’t just fall in your lap. We are all built the same but some of us have worked hard to get where we are. And you can do this yourself as well if you really want it badly enough.
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