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I will never forget that early day in January. At the time the market was severely oversold and when it happened, the stocks I was watching (IBM, GS, just to name a few) went up 4-6 point in one or two prints. It was so unexpected, with no Fed. meeting scheduled for the week, and it happened...

Wet: We have had this kind of conversations on another board and I do not wish to carry it over here. I think we are going way off topic here. Let's just say we have very different priorities, very different philosophies, very different values. When I am onto something, I am...

Reading a specialist is just like reading market makers, you are trying to learn their pattern, do they blow stops, do they trade with large spreads, how they handle gaps, etc. You are trying to read his motivation, is he long, is he short, and trade with him. This is the weakest area of my...

Wet: We are only successful at a certain field when we are doing it for a living. At equivalent tiers, professional basketball player is always better than some guy playing it on the street, playing music for fun is meaningless compared to someone playing for a professional concert...

Wet: If you have a fixed criterias for your system (the market index moving average crossovers or tea leaves reading doesn't matter), then of course it is a system. You do not trade a system until the conditions are met, as long as the conditions are pre-defined then yeah it is a mechanical...

Have to cast my vote on NYSE for now. Reading one specialist is easier than reading multiple market makers, liquidity, many more sectors to choose from . . . Besides, Nasdaq stocks simply don't move 10-20 points a day anymore, so there you go . . .

Sure I would post a screen shot when i get a chance. I have never day traded Nasdaq professionally (Datek + Quote Tracker doesn't count) so I don't know the technical differences. For a top->down sector trader's perspective, NYSE simply offers more variety in term of sectors, and I have no...

While I agree ultimately it all boils down to tape reading, I have to say based on my experience (and many senior traders at my firm) stocks do move with indexes. The indexes IMHO are every bit as significant as futures (in fact, for many sectors it is far more significant than futures)...

A bullet is a married put which in a nut shell allows you to bypass the uptick rule. It cost $75 to put up a 1500 (minimum) shares bullet for me (which means regardless of the trade, I lose $75). The open is almost the entire game for me, last a few days I have not been putting up bullets...

The summer market has a strange way to punish aggressive trading. Every time I go on a run and think I can afford to be a little more aggressive, I get smacked back down. Not a good way to open up the final week of the pay period as I finished with my second worst performance of the month...

Damn, where did you get those precise numbers? I noticed you do things in a very planned/precise manner, I am almost ready to say that you will almost certainly hit it big here at WorldCo based on your morning plans alone. Very very few traders at my firm go into the game with a written plan...

If you have been trading for a month and losing your shirt, don't feel bad, you are not alone. Up until last week, I have made less than people working at fast food places and I am pretty sure there are some people at my firm who would like to trade places with me. This is the toughest market...

In swing trading, yeah, I know some people who do ok with a 100% mechanical system, but they will never be as good as discretionary ones. In day trading (no overnight), I don't know any. I am talking about mechanical here, that means, entry point, loss-cutting point, trailing stops, all...

First of all, I am not aware of a single profitable (let alone successful) system day trader at my firm, if anyone know any please let me know. There are very few successful system swing traders out there, for day trading, it is plain impossible. Way too many factors are involved. Secondly...

If it could be done, people would have already done it. There are entire teams of developers very well funded doing this as a full time job, but the reality is the market is dynamic and that's why you will see very few succesful system traders and even fewer (not sure if there are any)...

No there is no volume requirement, but obviously if you don't do sufficient shares you will have trouble getting the best of the best commissions (say 0.75 cent per share). In order to swing trade with WorldCo you gotta have capital in your own account, you will get 4x margin plus interest...

Try http://stockcharts.com/def/servlet/SC.scan, they have a very hefty collection of various candlestick scans and it is free. While you can not build your own screen, it comes with more than enough variety and I feel BEI is overpriced for what it does, would rather get something like Metastock...

For me, I would trade either NYSE or Nasdaq, not both at same time because the underlying differences is significant for a day trader. It is better to focus on one or the other, instead of both at same time. I have considered switching to Nasdaq for a while but for now I am going to stick...

First of all, forget about depth information, nobody at my firm looks at what hell is going on at other exchanges, total noise most of the times. You are not trading Nasdaq here, you are trading NYSE, and tape reading is the most important skill to have. You don't have a Level 2, live with it...

>I only have one person to answer to: me. Same here, personally I think if you are down some rediculous amount of money, having someone to tell you to stop is nice. I have never ever been called by risk management (then again, I trade very conservatively). >Sure, I can't use bullets, and...