Dinerotrader

ARB Reasonable setup for a breakout above resistence.

Jan 4th +437 My goal this coming few months is to only trade my better setups and finally learn to pass on all the in between trades. I posted the individual trades for a little more accountability. I missed 2 great ones on oil and another one on the 6E because I didn't set up my alerts. I am also trying out the alerts to help me stay away from the excess trading trading. I am pretty busy at my corporate job during January so we'll see how often I can get my P/L posted. SIM results Just to keep some spice in the pot, I will try to also post a few updates occasionally on my stock trading progress based on the thread I started Here. Here is where I am at right now. The "gain" column shows overall $(%) gain or loss for that particular holding. These are real money trades and I am still working on my methods so exits aren't ironed out yet but entries are getting better. I have only sold one stock so far from this portfolio which was RAIL and I made 8%.

GRB Lots of normal volatility until 2 months ago and then price just got stuck in this channel.

KEI Might be a good beginning of an uptrend.

I am liking VLCM more and more as I look at its reactions to that support level and the hammer it made yesterday that just touched the trendline and bounced. I'm glad I put some money on this one.

PLFE I'm a little late to get in this one. Look at that great setup a few days back where the trendline matched just at the horizontal support level. I am getting more and more confident in that setup as a way to get a nice bounce with a tight stop. If it works with enough consistency, I'll just make larger bets when I find that setup but keep the stop tight so I can cut failures. I'll have to start looking for similar setups that failed.

TKTM Not a lot of volume on this one but I like the setup for a breakout.

I haven't seen any stocks here for real time trades for a while so here is one I just bought a few seconds ago on the breakout.

I have traded stocks for years as a swing trader on the side from my real job but during the summer of 2009 I decided I wanted to pursue the possibility of daytrading for a profession, specifically, futures trading. I thought I would try to post a thread in the newbie section that I wished was there when I started reading through tons of threads on this forum 6 months ago. This might be useful to only a few beginners but if I help just one, I won't owe Karma anything. Margin I started as a stock trader so moving to futures was confusing for me specifically, the "margin" requirements which means something different in stocks than it does futures. You simply have to have a specified amount of money in your account to trade 1 futures contract and that amount varies depending on the future (ie oil, gold....)but not on the current price of the future. On the chart below you can see that for OEC, trading 1 ES contract requires you to have $563 in your account for an intraday trade. There are other margin requirements if you want to hold on to a contract overnight. The $563 doesn't actually leave your account when you trade a contract but the profit or loss shows up in your account the moment you close the trade. The margin amount for each futures contract is not related to the price the contract is trading at. Most Common Futures Traded on TL Not an exhaustive list. Please note that most daytraders trade the ES but there are many other great futures to trade. Which broker to choose: I chose OpenEcry because they don't charge anything except commission for a live trading account. For the SIM account they charge $25 per month. Their SIM data feed sometimes has problems but for a beginner that is not making money trading, you need "cheap" before you need a perfect feed. Really good threads to read before making your first post Here is a list of some of my favorite threads that taught me so much when I began and still do today. There are many more amazing threads which learned from but I didn't want the list to be too long. These threads will give you more useable information for free than you can find anywhere else in my opinion. They also give you a feel for posting etiquette here at TL. Please learn from other's mistakes. How long does it take to become a profitable trader Trader P/L Reading Charts in Real Time Look at stock traders Day How do I start trading Trading strategy/methodology One of my first questions when I started was how do I decide on a trading methodology to start with when there is an infinite number of methods to try. I made my decision based on the experience of those who posted on the threads noted above. Books As usual, when you begin learning something new, most people try to find some books to read. I have read the forum much more than books but the most valuable books I have read are the Market Wizard series. IMO, they demonstrate that numerous trading methods can be used to make tons of money but that method must absolutely match your skill AND personality in order for it to work. This leads to a great realization that you MUST conform whatever great ideas you hear into a trading method that is your own. SIM vs. Real money trading There are some good discussons on this in the threads I noted above. For me, I couldn't trade futures with actual money because I couldn't lose very much while I was learning. The right balance for me thus far has been, SIM trading to develop my methods and get screen time watching price and throwing some a real money trades in there occasionally to get perspective on how emotional and influential money can be on your trades. One of the market wizards said this (paraphrased)," trade your smallest size while you are new to trading because that is when you are the worst at trading". That stuck with me and simply rang true. I realized I wouldn't ever post this information unless I accepted that it wouldn't be perfect. This is all just my opinion and I openly disclose that I am not yet a profitable day trader. This forum has been life changing for me so I wanted to try to give back. Hopefully, you found something useful. Dinerotrader

VLCM Some good movement off support and I like the company fundamentally. I'll probably put some money on this one tomorrow. I bought some LAD today which I posted a chart for a few posts back.

BWS Interesting trendline and support combination. Probably won't trade it because I can tell I'd have to work at deciding where to place my stop and I need these stock trades to just jump out at me. This was interesting enough to post.

CCRN It is always interesting to see a level on a daily chart and then go to the weekly chart and see that level get reactions back in 2003. Play breakout at green line.

LYV Looking for good breakout movement.

Tried to take fewer trades but got sucked in by some choppy breakout movement. I though we were going to see some real breakdowns in price but the buyers just keep jumping in. Reasonable results. Only traded 1 contract. SIM

ARP I posted this one earlier in the thread and bought it with real money. I am up 17% right now and price is at resistence. Do I take my profits and maybe play a breakout in order to keep with the uptrend or do I just hold on and maybe move my stop up to $6.80. I haven't decided yet what to do.

LAD Couple charts on this one. The weekly charts shows a major downtrend. The daily chart is showing some tight action around and might be reversing trend. This is what I would call a Thales reversal breakout, if the breakout occurs. Not that he would want that name for it but he is the one that taught me about playing reversal breakouts on his thread. The overall down trend concerns me on the daily chart but I can see the auto industry getting some legs in 2010.

I am liking this more with a possible bounce off the trend line as well as that short term support level.

ELY (Callaway Golf Inc) Aren't the baby boomers all supposed to start retiring in hords soon. I'd think Callaway might profit from all this. Pretty strong S/R level at ~9.30. I'd like to see a breakout above that level and then I am in.

STL The down trend got a little break after a bounce of support so I am looking for a breakout at the green line.

I do not look at sector charts. I used to look at those types of things more but most of my time is spent dealing with futures trading right now so I am trying to see if I can trade stocks successfully using a relatively simple method that does not take very much time. There are quite a lot of stocks out there with charts that don't technically look good to trade but as I have started posting to this thread I have found more than I expected that look appealing. If I add much more complexity to my method I will lose the "simple/efficient" aspect of stock trading that I am trying to apply. If I cannot trade stocks profitably with a simple method, I'll scap the idea and just go with futures. I agree about BGH. I am trying to look at these charts with probabilities and risk at the forefront of my analysis. I want great R:R at entry and I want an entry setup that puts the probabilities on my side. If I can get those 2 pieces together, I can just let the trade ride and adjust according to future PA.

RUTH I posted this one because price seems to have respected a couple levels with tight PA around each level. One to watch.

BGH I'd hate to short this without some indication the momentum is ending. Resistance level looks pretty strong to me.

So far I am really enjoying this thread. It is amazing how putting these ideas in a thread is so much more meaningful than just making mental notes while I scan through stocks. I’ve also been making some real money on a few of those that I took trades on. So far I have traded RAIL, OCNF, MBI, and ARP. I sold RAIL for an 8% gain, I am up 28% on MBI, and I’m up 17% on ARP (as of 12/27/09). What stocks to scan through? I try to look at most of these picks from a mostly technical view but I do give some fundamental bias for some. The question for me right now is whether I should just trade any stock with a good chart or should I only look for technical setups on stocks with strong fundamentals. Thales noted that he primarily considers IBD 100 for his picks so he can incorporate reasonable fundamentals into his selections. I do like a small cap stock subscription I use from Motley Fool. I throw their picks in the mix of stocks I look through and only trade the ones that have a good technical entry point. Does anyone else have what they believe is a good way to find a group of strong fundamental stocks that can then be sorted through technically? I think I will try to start posting where my stop loss would be in red and my entry level in green Summary To summarize the thread thus far, here are all the charts I have posted and the couple Thales posted. My charts PMI GKK EPAX RAIL - Traded for an 8% gain. DNN NCS AGO GVA OCNF - Traded and stopped out for 5% loss MBI - Still own S TLAB ARP - Still own MCO GME KTII CENX F JOYG CBR MDTH SWSI SCSC CKH Thales AIXG SRLS I am really gearing up for a lot more analysis and research in 2010 to fine tune my trading methods. Let's make some money!

I was thinking that the stock symbol would work for referencing on responses or just quoting the post. If I used numbers, wouldn't everyone just have to start using a legend to look up what we are talking about? Quoting the post works best so everyone can see the original chart that was posted. I'll try to put together a summary post on Monday for all the charts I have posted. Thanks.

CKH Here is a confusing one to me which I wouldn't trade because I am torn between a long and short position. I see an obvious head and shoulder pattern but I also see a pretty strong S/R level that price just moved up from. I'll be back posting more charts on Monday and posting some follow ups on charts I posted that I took real trades on.