Do you follow the market from open to close?

A

AndrewL

You sometimes see the brokerage trading desks where the traders are glued to their 5 monitors all day. Is this really necessary? I don't know what time frame they're trading but to me if you're going to hold from near the open to near close it may even be counterproductive. I used to follow every tick every day and repeatedly got driven out of my position by smaller trends going against me when the larger trend was still in my favor.
I had numerous small losses balanced by a few big gains ending up even in the end. Many of the small losses would've become big gains if I would've stayed in my position. I've decided to check in on my position about once every 10 minutes from now on instead of watching tick. This way the "fluke" moves won't drive me out but I'll still be able to get out in the case of a real trend reversal. As a relatively inexperienced trader I think it's especially useful for me as I already have more than enough info to look at. I keep track of the charts of the major solar stocks (the sector I trade) along with the broad market indexes. I've also seen numerous occasions where the entire sector would rally and a few stocks would lag behind. Watching each tick you might think something was wrong with these stocks. In the absence of any news and on normal volume give it an hour or two and the laggers would nearly always rally back.
 
I follow the mkts. from 6:00am through 11:00pm central time.

It's good to watch the market a lot (streaming hourly chart, etc.) because pattern recognition improves over time & with practice.

Trading should really be a "practice" like law or medicine. One should really "practice trading" instead. We can all improve by our own standards always.

Analysis & Execution are the two parts.

Analysis decides what prices to buy & sell. Execution is the emotional task of following through & placing orders to receive fills.

By separating trading's two constituents I've improved my game.

To be fair, I think 80% of traders become stuck in the "analysis" - struggling with indicators / oscillators instead of looking for "floors" and "ceilings."

Cocoa was '08's best performer so I bought a big "battalion" of Godiva as a ritual LOL. :D

I'll let you all know if it helps additionally. I think crude may have a few more bucks on the upside. Gasoline broke out upwardly & the grains, corn & beans look constructive.

Even old stocky market looks positive...that is until it reaches 951 area & gets whacked! Ha
 
Reaver, I hear you. I'm a Vault 101 escapee myself. At 31 some might think I'm a little to old to play practically every RPG and Strategy game out but when you're self employed you have a lot of free time. In all seriousness you might trade better by relieving some of the stress. I've followed the market full time for 2 years since I had a major stake in First Solar mostly by pure luck. MY small stake that was parked in FSLR at $30 grew into a big one after it rose 800%! I've since lost most of it back.

GC, I have the opposite problem of most traders. Overtrading is my main issue. I fear missing out on a trend and often jump the gun and trade before the trend has even developed. I have to tell myself every day to react instead of predict. I've decided not to try not to trade the first and last half hour because the volatility is just too much. It may be a good idea to follow the market during this time anyway in case I decide to trade these times in the future but as of right now my strategy seems to work great in all but these times.
 
Once I'm in, I set alerts on my phone and every half hour or so I'll check my position via phone, other than that, it's as boring as shit to sit there all day. I'm no scalper though. The moves I look for can take anything from 1 day to 2 weeks to play out.
 
Quote from AndrewL:

Reaver, I hear you. I'm a Vault 101 escapee myself. At 31 some might think I'm a little to old to play practically every RPG and Strategy game out but when you're self employed you have a lot of free time. In all seriousness you might trade better by relieving some of the stress. I've followed the market full time for 2 years since I had a major stake in First Solar mostly by pure luck. MY small stake that was parked in FSLR at $30 grew into a big one after it rose 800%! I've since lost most of it back.

GC, I have the opposite problem of most traders. Overtrading is my main issue. I fear missing out on a trend and often jump the gun and trade before the trend has even developed. I have to tell myself every day to react instead of predict. I've decided not to try not to trade the first and last half hour because the volatility is just too much. It may be a good idea to follow the market during this time anyway in case I decide to trade these times in the future but as of right now my strategy seems to work great in all but these times.
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Hell yeah watch out for Tranquility Lane..freaky stuff. ha ha

I'm 27 myself and have found videogames to be just as fun as they were when I was 12. ha ha

In all seriousness I have been able to stick with my trades better. I generally look to position on the hourly charts using daily charts for reference...I have a timer that goes off every 30 minutes to remind me to check on things...but playing videogames helps me shake off the stress when holding through these crazy fluke moves we've been having recently.


Good luck and good trading 101.
 
Quote from Cherrypicker:

Once I'm in, I set alerts on my phone and every half hour or so I'll check my position via phone, other than that, it's as boring as shit to sit there all day. I'm no scalper though.
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Yup same here...you essentially posted the same thing as me while I was typing my last. ha ha
 
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