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This about sums up the psychology behind every blowup I would imagine. Al Brooks nicely captures the definition of price action the inescapable footprint of what is happening as a huge number of smart people are independently trying to make the most money that they can in the market. In...

That's what I do. But I've communicated with traders on this site and also read comments by traders on this site who say they always have a stop in mind, but never place it as a hard stop. I think it's paranoia they have about "the market" looking for their stop and stopping them out if it...

I believe hard stops are important at all times. I know a lot of seasoned traders say they use mental stops and honor them fully, but I believe every trader should put in a disaster stop, the max loss per trade you're willing to bear. This can be very far from the stop that would invalidate your...

Yeah sometimes those "woulda couldas" haunt you for a while. I had 80 Oct BRL calls in spring 2008 when the stock tanked on what I considered fundamentally irrelevant news. My plan was to hold them for several months (they were 5 months out) because I was certain the stock would retrace most...

BTW, this strategy gets you long on a higher low (because the MA is rising) and short on a lower high (MA is falling). It's especially successful if your profit target is 2x or more your stop. After a multi-leg up trend or down trend, a very safe countertrend entry is to short the first...

For short term trading (intraday to month-long swings), I've noticed that a 20-period moving average in your time frame works exceptionally well and IMHO is all you need on a chart. Study the charts and notice that when the 20 MA is rising, price moves from proximity to the 20 upward. If the...

That's way beyond EXTREME. That's TWISTED!!!

There was a time when I had trouble taking a loss and either used no stop or moved stops frequently. As of last April, I go into each trade with a hard stop. This is my bet, the amount I'm willing to pay and to lose if the setup becomes invalidated. My only problem now is moving the stop...

My husband and I are developing an automated system which is in the testing stages using a demo account and nearly debugged or so it seems :D The most profitable R:R in testing turned out to be 1:2.5, and it's quite profitable so far. We'll see how it plays out when we take it live, but...

Engine, he's coming into his biggest week ever: middle of last October he had a $138K week :D :D :D

Exactly! First of all, the market's in a well established uptrend the only way to play counter-trend is to short each new high, not to short the pullback from a high. The pullback from each new high is where the bulls are adding to their long positions and trapping the late shorts who decided...

Awesome, Neke! You got to this point because you had a severe drawdown and had to rethink your strategies and risk management. You can double your account again by adhering to the same processes that got you here. No matter how much buffer you have, protect it, keep taking only the very best...

I've often wondered about this myself. Does it make sense to have a conditional GTC order in place so that if the underlying reaches a price that invalidates the trade, your option position is closed at market?

No trades today, looks like I didn't miss a whole lot either.

Call your trades in advance based on this model so we can evaluate its profitability.

Hey, I play bass in a Bollinger band! (I used to play with the Five Piece Bath Ensemble but they were so "last century") My MA's calling me for dinner, so I'll just give you a little Elliott Wave g'bye and we continue this EXTREME HIGH ENERGY discussion tomorrow!!!

That was YOU I saw coming out of SBUX???

AAPL is also amazingly liquid. I've been sim trading some AAPL option strategies and it's very easy to manage risk tightly

Each day I've been averaging 100 cars at a time and those pesky end of day margin calls keep taking me out! I'm down $500K on these big honkin sim cars when if I'd been allowed to hang on to my positions I could've made $300 or even possibly $500 in profits! I guess being down $500K on a...

How do you capture 1-3 cents and maintain a risk:reward that allows you to be profitable? Even the slow, easy stuff I trade jumps around several cents.