Turn off the news.If you’re not feeling well for whatever reason, take the day off.
Feeling overly confident? Decrease your size.
Waffling on a trade? Pull the trigger! The hardest ones are usually winners.
Resist the urge to take off half when a trade is going your way.
Have a target in mind for every trade. Exit when price approaches that level.
Support, resistance and targets are ‘areas’, not specific prices. Give them some leeway.
Trade in the direction of the Cumulative TICK.
Unusually strong/weak Cumulative TICK? Increase your size.
Use mental stops. Adjust your stops based on the current volatility.
Establish a total maximum loss you’ll take in one day and stop trading if that’s hit.
Be conscious of your self-talk. Maintain a positive inner dialogue with yourself.
Archives of “targets” tag
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Turn off the news.Market Volatility
Many, many times traders are quite conscientious and self-controlled in most areas of their lives, but experience lapses of discipline specific to trading. When this happens, it’s often the case that the trading itself–*how* they’re trading–is artificially creating the failure to follow trading rules. A key culprit in all this is market volatility. Volatility changes from day to day and week to week. It also varies as a function of time of day. Frequently, traders trade a fixed size and set fixed targets and stops, heedless of the underlying market volatility. In a low volatility environment, they fail to hit their targets and get stopped out, criticizing themselves for leaving money on the table. In an environment of enhanced volatility, the market will blow through their stops or exceed their targets, leaving them feeling that they did not trade well. This is especially true when traders find themselves unable to take what is normal heat in an environment of raised volatility. In such cases, it really isn’t a lapse of discipline causing the problem. Rather, the trader is not adapting to market conditions. Adhering to fixed rules in a variable environment is not necessarily a virtue. Changing markets can prevent us from enacting those fixed rules.
Day Trading Mistakes
There are some major day trading mistakes that just about every new trader will make early on in their career. The ones who survive are those who can recognize these mistakes and take corrective action.
The first mistake many day traders make is to skip the planning phase of the day or a trade. Every day you sit down in front of your monitors you should have a general plan for the day. You should understand the major trends and support/resistance of the major indices, and the stocks you plan on trading. In addition to that, once you see your stock setting up for a trade you should have a plan that includes an entry, a target and a stop-loss before you even pull the trigger on the trade.
Another mistake that we often see in day trading is the inability to exit on a losing trade. If you have issues with getting out of the market when your pre-planned loss has been hit on your own, try using stop-loss orders. Never. Never ever ever move a stop loss order once it’s been placed. This requires some discipline but it will save you tons of money in the long run. You should never be hoping that your stock will turn around, and go where you expected. You should be executing your plan to the letter.
On a similar note, you also never want to move your targets. If you keep moving your target away from the stock’s current price, you’re never going to take your profits. A typical day trading exit strategy is to take profits at predetermined levels as you proceed into green territory. This means that before you’ve entered the trade you’ve chosen two or more targets. You exit a portion of your trade at each target. Now, if you think your stock is going to trend for the day, you can plan for that too. This is called a trade-to-hold. It doesn’t mean you move your target, but rather you try to stay in the trend by setting a trailing stop. A trailing stop can either be automatically set at a certain percentage or point value behind the stock price, or you can mechanically keep moving your stop loss up to obvious points of resistance or support behind your trending stock. (more…)
Financial astrology targets August 6th
The Grand Cross of the Cardinal Climax is a rare event. This is the incredibly rare event that astrologer Arch Crawford is also warning about (see this article).
The same Mr Crawford ranked #1 Stock Market Timer for the period October 1 2007 through October 31, 2009.
Trading Without Targets
Focused on entries, traders often don’t explicitly identify where they would harvest profits. They hold trades too long, exiting in a panic after reversals, or they take profits quickly, missing opportunity. They don’t factor current volatility into estimates of how far the market could move on their time frame, and they often don’t explicitly look for targets based upon prior moves and ranges.