Enigmatics

Sure thing. I'm always up early for pre-market. I trade a lot of SPXU and FAS. I make sure to mark a horizontal line for every resistance or support they make. Here are two examples on a 2min chart of the trading channels I missed today. For the trend lines I look for two common points in a straight line of the channel on the top and on the bottom. Drawing them afterwards it feels like it was a no-brainer so I don't know what I was thinking at as they took place. Again I've marked these where I felt like I missed the obvious, but maybe there's more to it. SPXU FAS (EDIT: I wrote SHORT ON SUPPORT, but I meant SHORT ON RESISTANCE)

I've recently been trying to tighten up my ability to draw the right trend lines, horizontal lines, and identifying trade channels. Do you guys have any specific pointers that could help? Furthermore, how reliable are trend lines on smaller time intervals like a 2min? I was having a bit of success pairing 2min charts with 5min and trading breaks on ETF's of prior resistance levels. I've suddenly hit a brick wall. I have been a little too focused on 2min (kind of ignoring the 5min) and trying to attack every horizontal resistance level I marked with very little distinction. Suffice to say I've suddenly been very unsuccessful. I feel like my little run with scalping 8-10 ticks was fool's gold. The reason I bring up the issue with the horizontal resistances is that I rarely (if ever) have bought the dip and I want to be able to with confidence instead of constantly relying on breaking of resistances. This becomes harder and harder to do if the volume dries up as the trading day moves on and the algos run amuck.

Join a prop firm (some only require 5k) and you can day trade.

Good trading, but IMO that is a lot of dead money tied up in comms ....

#3 is the most glaring to me.

It's a parable for planning and patience ....

Well the irony is that he was completely impatient in the early going. In fact He took a serious hit on a stock (lost about 30% of his port) back in late March because he wasn't sticking to the rules that I was preaching to him about controlled position sizes and entry confirmation. At first he told me that, unlike me, he could take more "risks" given the fact that he already had a job. After that, he learned that that was no reason to become undisciplined and it's been all uphill from there. Now that I think about it, after that huge loss he's been on a $19,000+ move north.

I'm not bragging about his results. That wasn't the point.

You know how I "officially" know it was a complete mistake to try and day trade for a living without the proper reserves to get me thru the hard times? One of the guys I discussed some pages ago ..... a guy who I took under my wing back in February, talked him into joining the prop firm I was with and taught him my method ..... well today he cracked $17,000. He started with $7,850. It's just astounding .... and I'm proud of him. But man .... it's like watching what I felt like I should've been doing. He's become calm. He took a few lumps as he was getting acclimated but he knows his bills are paid by his other job .... and he's patient with his entries/positions. I'm watching him rip off $400 - $500 a day on his profitable days. Man ....... :crap:

Got my interests peaked in that biography ..... Gonna try to snag a copy ....

My personal opinion is that gambling implies lack of strategy and taking "chances" based on emotions.

OK .... I just told you my next step is to supplement my income .... I also just told you I've been re-examining my setups. I'm now focusing more on the breakouts of the accumulation instead of the high risk high reward areas of those drops. You give a lot of "food for thought" or rather open-ended questions ..... Like I said, you're free to judge it however you may. I don't really think you're seeing what I'm seeing every single day so it's really impossible for you to judge what the setup is capable of. You've probably got one of your own and that's fine ....

I said I was "tweaking" .... that involves looking over charts of trades I entered, looking at my failed exits, and re-defining my terms. I've also been re-examining my setups (which often lead to accumulation phases) and looking for the meatier areas to strike instead of the high risk areas. Definitely drawing more horizontal lines than ever to improve my sell targets. I don't have any doubt my method can be profitable .... I know you don't .... and that's fine. You're allowed that opinion.

At the moment that boils down to finding ways to supplement my income. I can already picture in my mind how trading would be if there wasn't that kind of pressure I feel to trade for income. I could be more patient in my approach if I knew my bills were already going to be taken care of.

Yes I've had a plan, one which I know can be profitable. My achilles heel has been my exits, particularly as I got behind on the account. It led to staying in positions too long or not staying in them long enough. I guess in some ways "time" is not on my side. My equity size was rather limited to begin with, especially after hearing what people in here have started with. I trade for income as well, which has put more pressure on me that I originally planned for. I struggle to find the proper "patience" because of it. I've spent that last 5-6 days only paper trading (I know it still isn't 100% the same) after I had gotten some good advice from a new friend. I've tweaked a couple more things that should help me somewhat. Still the issue is time.

In my time reading stock message boards over the course of the last 2.5 years, this is really the first time I've seen someone else openly say this. It became so painfully obvious to me early on.

See that was one of those "daily" versions of the setup I prefer .... in the past I've only day traded the first day and not stuck it out because of my aversion to going long.

Ugggh EBIX ... it hurts .... :crap:

Actually I made money on the bounce after that precipitous drop at the end of May on that Seeking Alpha article accusing it of accounting discrepancies. I always laugh at those things. I was also in it a couple days ago on June 3rd at 17.12 for a bounce, but got shook out. ..... it became part of the discussion in this thread about my approach and method. I've taken a few days off from trading so I never got back in. I was pretty confident based on the setup that decent bounce was gonna play out.

Maybe EBIX could've solved my "capital" problem. Haha

My stop loss over the past month or so has been because of how tight I've been playing due to previous losses. Again I'm working with a limited port size and using margin is riskier because of it. Then when my stop losses are set too tight, I'm putting too much pressure on a "perfect" entry trying to be naive that every trade involves a risk and a reward. The amount of those bouncers I've been shook out of in the past month is absolutely absurd and what got me the most frustrated.

Is it fair though to take one comment from a disgruntled investor as use it as a basis for contradiction? I didn't use Motley Fool as the reason to think the stock was cheap. Often news is noise. I'm simply looking at the markdown of the price since it was at 30.00 and the relative volume/candle relationship to where it is now. It certainly is no valuation (at least on my end) of long-term viability of the company and stock, simply an opportunity for a trade. I'm not familiar with the extent of how much reading you've done of Wyckoff's methods or VSA ..... Both methods document that Friday's candle is a clue as to the culmination of weak hands selling and smarter hands accumulating ... Someone liking those prices, whether it's for a short term reversal or complete turnaround we won't know until the story aka the price/volume unfold ... Maybe "cheap" is in the wrong word. I'm looking for where there's major interest in lower prices.

Cool cool ..... I'm not just looking at cheap though. I was trying to employ volume/price action to determine what the market thinks is cheap. Back when I used to just use indicators, that's where the "cheap" construct wasn't bonafied. You went with a broker recommendation though? BTW I wanted to correct myself on EBIX again. The CEO/CFO resigning was a different stock. This one "supposedly" had accounting issues per Seeking Alpha. There however has been insider buying.

Well I assure you this isn't about ego with me. Ego would imply "gambling." #5, see again the tick potential on the moves does actually make the bounce rewarding. I think I posted the #'s on EBIX before but from where I bought it turned out to be a 1.8% risk for up to a 6.3% gain. What kind of risk/reward ratio should I be looking for? Well, I definitely want to learn the ropes of shorting so that I can take advantage of both sides if desired. As for the "support of the move", I fully agree .... I've too often caught myself holding out for more, specifically when I've found myself in a slump .... which really needs to stop. Make sure that every trade is treated separate in it's own right and not influenced by the previous. Well I'm just curious .... Are all dip opportunities "taking on the market" though? Plenty of times dips become buying opportunities. This is why I have tried to study the various price/volume methodologies to spot where the right money is going. When I said contrarian I merely meant I'm looking for situations where it appears people have panicked so I can buy at cheaper prices. LOL .... It just makes things easier to look at.

I don't trade this pattern every time and certainly not just any dipper. It depends specifically on the price and the volume being absorbed near the bottom. As taught by VSA, this can be an indication of "supply" being taken off the market in order to facilitate a mark up of price as demand comes back into the stock. Saying it goes against the trend certainly depends on a stock by stock basis. Not all the dippers I play are long term clunkers. Many of these setups happen on stocks that have been on a steady uptrend. But yes .... the more I talk about this with you and others on here it's becoming increasingly more apparent that this setup requires a larger risk/reward ratio then I originally anticipated ..... more specifically keeping a .05% stop loss limit like I did on EBIX is naive at best. Yes. I'm not trading in a vacuum. Over my 10 months of day trading, I've learned that all kinds of conditions can affect the way a stock moves outside of it's chart set up and what the VSA is telling me. Economic data, global news, sector performance, options expirations, the dollar, etc ..... all of these have an impact. Let me ask you this, if those adages like "Be greedy when others are fearful" have no impact on anything other than long term fundamental investors, then why does a stock like EBIX bounce from 16.50 to 18.00? In your words the stock is in a steady downtrend and I would be "trading against the trend" ..... Yet, it gave ample opportunity for one to snag up to 10% as a day trade, which is a fairly sizable bounce. Per VSA, it doesn't matter what time frame - it comes down to supply and demand of shares. If there's high volume absorption of these shares then somebody is clearly interested. Seeing as many of these as I have (regardless of whether I've been good enough to benefit fully) I happen to agree for the most part. Are their failed attempts by somebody trying to reverse the stock? I'm sure there are. I am interested in the setup because of the % opportunity on the bounce. I've attested I am doing something wrong and am trying to nail down what that is .... After going thru this discussion with you guys, I feel as though my risk/reward management is completely off as noted by all the shakeouts I've been a part of. The stops I'm keeping are extremely naive. I am trying to be too perfect and it's impossible. These stops are also because I'm using margin and trying to keep my losses as minimal as possible because I'm down in my account. Oh I understand. It's not a setup for everyone. I used to be very nervous with them when I first started because of the fear factor behind the ol "falling knife" hysteria. I've noticed most people tend to gravitate towards up trending momentum. I guess I'm taking the contrarian angle. Outside of the stop loss issue, it's also come down to the pressures of trading for income without a sufficient portfolio size.