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Day Trading Skills

When you first learnt day trading did you sit next to an expert for a while? I have seen a few day traders trade, but I have created my own specific style that suits me, this has evolved over time, I can’t even remember what strategies anyone used but I recall mainly trend following moving averages crosses you will be surprised how simple they keep things. They will take a fair few losses and then run big winners, but taking losses can have a psychological impact on many traders and it will stop them taking that big winning trade.

A friend of mine was taking the Stanzione trades and he had a run of 9 losing trades in a row you know what happened the next one which he didn’t take was a nice winner, but I’m like Gordon Gekko. I hate losing trades – it ruins my day so that approach would not be right for me. I have no contact now with traders I knew back then but I presume they are still trading. Again I try to keep contact with other traders to a minimum because the talks you have plant that seed that can come back to haunt you.

A lot has been made of screen watching, trying to catch every trade, I really don’t approach day trading like that. If you are daytrading you can’t expect to be catching 60 70 80 pt moves off of the smaller timeframes, lock in trail and maybe a thing to do for newcomers is have an achievable target and once hit get out of there, if you keep coming back into the market i.e. overtrading you will get caught.

Well its been interesting on here with some undoubted skill on show but I`m sticking with my daytrading as it has served me well over the years. A profit every year. I obviously don`t have the right mentality/knowledge for stock trading. “If it ain`t broken…” etc. I have managed to more than triple my day trading account this year so far.

I think both time, natural skill and conviction are needed to be successful in that way.

I wondered how you set yourself up emotionally/psychologically during times like yesterdays wild swings on Wall Street? As a long term investor one can monitor macro economic stats…etc to gauge a view on the market in the medium term and ignore ‘noise’ but intraday on volatility like we have seen it can be very frustrating if you do try and pick a direction, do you literally play what is in front of you and try and ignore your opinion? I have found that when I let opinion take over a trade it’s often wrong were if I’d played what the chart was telling me it would have been a good trade!

I’m not quite sure how to answer obviously as a day trader we need to be focused very much on what the charts are telling us. Because the markets quite often take a while to react to news and then usually they don’t react how we expect, so psychologically I like to think of day traders as special forces you are in a hostile environment on your own and your senses need to be switched on at all times, I listen to snippets of news just to see what’s going on as soon as I’m in a trade I pretty much turn all news off as I find it can affect my decision making.

I start each day with a clean slate knowing the market can go in any direction and try to be prepared for whatever that is coming by keep a check on the major markets. I like to trade at the longer timeframes just to see what the general trends are if markets are ranging etc and then ready for the battle to commence, I’m not sure this answers your question? But that’s how I look at the market! Although really, why not take a bit off and try and run the rest?

Hi, I’m quite new here – not a day trader even though I seem to watch the screen constantly. I’m quite young (24 tomorrow!) and I’m looking to invest for the long term (5+ years). Just trying to judge a good entry point.

My plan was to drip feed all the way down into solid FTSE100/FTSE250 stocks – I have a shortlist of shares I’m watching. Buying on fear is a good plan, but trying to figure out when fear is at its maximum is difficult – like trying to judge the bottom of a market. And then psychologically – pressing the buy button when everything is plummeting is also quite difficult.

Don’t buy all the way down, wait for market to turn and then buy…

2011 has been a difficult year – untradeable to a certain extent – it may be better to wait for a clear upturn in the market, you might miss a smidge of the early bit of cream, but people have been trying to catch an upturn in this market for months and I guess most have got a bloody nose from trying to do so. The fact is it’s very difficult to sit on the sidelines but that has definitely been the thing to do since early summer, well unless you had a shorting strategy, it’s been said on here a 1000times before but patience, discipline and a simple plan that you can adhere to is the way to go!

Day trading is perhaps an excellent example of how money is made by keeping losses smaller than profits rather than using a crystal ball to predict the future movement of instruments.

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