Handlowiec

This thread made me think of a quote by Jesse Livermore... "A man must believe in himself and his judgment if he will make a living at this game. That is why I don't believe in tips. If I buy stocks on Smith’s tip I must sell those same stocks on Smith's tip. I am depending on him. Suppose Smith is away on a holiday when the selling time comes around? No, sir, nobody can make big money on what someone else tells him to do. I know from experience that nobody can give me a tip or a series of tips that will make more money for me than my own judgment. It took me five years to learn to play the game intelligently enough to make big money when I was right. " - Jesse Livermore

Go through the options and look at Technical then you can filter volume. Personally I only trade stocks that have at least 500,000 shares a day. I have been burned too many times trading low volume stocks at break out to reverse and then take a loss. The higher the volume the better (30 day average) and the higher the price the better (IMO). If you get a list of 100 stocks that is wonderful, then flip through them looking for setups. I know what a trade setup looks like for me. I can flip through 100 stocks in about 10 minutes. Years ago I would not think that was possible, but now I know what I want to look for so it is really quick.

I use an option scanner in mtrig.com for weekly options. There is a free trail if you want to give it a shot.

Consumer Confidence numbers are in the group of "coincidence indicators" which mean they have very little value for traders and investors.

Go to the "Stock Screener" page on Barchart (Click Here) Then click on Filters->Opinion->Then select Trend Spotter... When I use this tool I then open the "Flip Charts" looking for patterns and trade setups. Just because Trend Spotter says GO LONG is not enough to GO LONG.

hmm...interesting first post, do you own the site? :doh:

The books you mentioned are the top books I have read many times. You will no doubt really like "Technical Analysis and Stock Market Profits" by Richard Schabacker. He is the real originator or Technical Analysis and coined all the patterns (head and shoulders, triangles, flags, and more).

I have ready many TA book over the years. I recently read the classic "Technical Analysis and Stock Market Profits" written in 1932. That book by Richard Schabacker was one of the most complete book on TA and psychology I have ever read. I soon found out where many folks such as John Murphy pulled their ideas. It cam from Schabacker. Murphy does cover indicators but chart patterns the originator of it all was Schabacker. Schabacker's book Technical Analysis and Stock Market Profits was first written as a course and sold to traders. The book is a complete course. It does not focus on any technical indicators since there were none. I would recommend his book to get started looking at chart patterns, then you can start looking at indicators. I did the reverse. Over many years of trading I would rank Schabacker's book as #1. To get a traders overall mindset my favs are. 1. Technical Analysis and Stock Market Profits (Schabacker) 2. Trading in the Zone 3. Jesse Livermore, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator 4. Trader Vic: Methods of a Wall Street Master 5. Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets 6. Technical Analysis of Stock Trends by Robert D. Edwards and John Magee (they give credit to Schabacker) This book is required reading for CTAs and was written in the 30-40's. #2 and #3 are books to read again and again when you find that you are fighting more emotional battles than trading battles in the market. I used to think Elder's "Trading for a living" was really good until I spent many more years trading, now it seems gimmicky to me. I will finish with a wonderful quote from Schabacker. "But it is this very faith in the efficiency of stock charts that leads to an introductory warning against over confidence and mistrust. There is nothing like the thrill that comes to the beginner when he once commences to master the rudimentary principles of chart reading and sees his first few forecast analyses turn out correctly. The greatest danger for the beginner lies in just this primary awakening to the value of his study. With his first few successes he is likely to mistake a probable forecast for a certain one, to become overconfident, to overtrade, and suddenly find himself involved in a disastrous quagmire of heavy losses and, what is perhaps more important, in a hopeless state of indecision, mistrust, skepticism, and bitter disappointment." -Schabacker

I use StockFetcher.com to scan for patterns. It is cheap, only $9 a month. You can try it for free. Here is the link for the Flash Version. It has a pattern seach for common patterns such as triangles and channels. Someone mentioned PatternSite. There is a free windows app on the site you can download to do the search for patterns is free, but it is a pain to use since you have to download data, import it, and run a scan. It can take a long time.

I have written code and back-tested RSI, MACD for all kinds of cross overs, RSI crossing 50, MACD crossing zero, and more. (Using AMIBroker) Then back-test this on thousands of stocks. If someone can really make money using these indicators alone I would sure like to see it. If you have a strategy I would be willing to back-test it and post the results from AMIBroker. Here is RSI(14) Crossing 50 and the results for all stocks under NYSE for the past 10 years. 15% Avg a year, 400% Return. Sounds good, well then look at the other stats 39% Winners, MAX Draw Down $94,000. See the attached report image. xBuy = Cross(RSI(14),50); xSell = Cross(50,RSI(14)); PlotBuy = ExRem(xBuy ,xSell); PlotSell = ExRem(xSell ,xBuy ); Buy =PlotBuy ; Sell = PlotSell ; Short = PlotSell ; Cover = PlotBuy ; PlotShapes(shapeUpArrow * Buy, colorGreen, 0, Low ); PlotShapes(shapeDownArrow * Sell, colorRed, 0, High ); Test Results Signals DIA

Put some real money on the line. Get your emotions going and you will gain more insight. You can do this by buying just 1 share of the Apple. This way you are more tied to it, get a real fill, and you will stay on top of the trade. If you trade at IB you are taking $1 buck for the trade.

I have been trading weekly's on a trial bases using an option search engine at MTR Investors Group. What I have been doing is selling naked puts on weeklys where the strike price is below a support level. I have been doing this on a Monday to give myself 5 days until expiration for the put to expire worthless.

Curtis, TheDude makes some great points. It sounds like you have a solid background to get back into your career if you decided to do so in the future. it is not many times opportunity comes along where you can give it your all to trade full time. Just keep the confidence in check and apply your risk management as you stated. I wish you the best success in this endeavor!