Newbie Trading Log

T

t0yland

Hey everyone,

Im new to this forum and new to trading. Im going to post the trades I make here in hopes that people will let me know what I do wrong/right.

A little about myself. Im 21s old and in the USAF. Im starting trading with a very small amount of only $3500. I know this isnt much but im going to try swing trading. I first got into trading when I was 16 years old. Put most of the money I got from my parttime job into the market. Well I did 'ok' for awhile untill I didnt follow a stop and the stock just didnt watn to come back.

Anyway my first trade:

Put in a buy for 310 shares of AOL tommorow at market. Was having trouble deciding if I should use a buy stop at 10.80.
My stop loss will be at 10.00.

Any comments?
 


What is your plan, i.e., why a buy for that many shares of that particular stock at this particular time at this particular price? why a market buy? why a stop at 10, etc.?

--Db
 
My basic plan is to look for EMA cross overs, MACD singals, volume increases/decreases, and stochastic cross indicators. This particular stock has all of them at this time, for my time frame. I was undecided if I should buy at todays high or at market. Finally I decided market because in the past this particular stock generally opens higher than the previous high then goes down, if its going to go down for the day. When its changing trend anyway. If that was the case then I would be in the trade regardless. I set 10 as the stoploss becuase that appears to be where the resistance is.(In the last week or so its dropped to 10 then rebounded) I am looking to hold from anywhere to a few days to a few weeks.

Im very novice at this so if you think im completely wrong tell me.
 
Quote from t0yland:

My basic plan is to look for EMA cross overs, MACD singals, volume increases/decreases, and stochastic cross indicators. This particular stock has all of them at this time, for my time frame. I was undecided if I should buy at todays high or at market. Finally I decided market because in the past this particular stock generally opens higher than the previous high then goes down, if its going to go down for the day. When its changing trend anyway. If that was the case then I would be in the trade regardless. I set 10 as the stoploss becuase that appears to be where the resistance is.(In the last week or so its dropped to 10 then rebounded) I am looking to hold from anywhere to a few days to a few weeks.

Im very novice at this so if you think im completely wrong tell me.
More...

Why do you want to buy a stock in a downtrend?

All of the things you mentioned sound like bottom picking to me. You're going to get burned...
 
Forgot about the number of shares..

I decided upon that particular number of shares for a few reasons.
1. I only have 3500 in the account and if I do smaller trades brokerage fees will really eat into any profits i might happen to get.
2. I didnt buy 324 because I dont know exaclty what the price will be tommorow. If it opens higher than todays high then I woont have enough capital to buy that many shares. I dont know if the broker would just cancel the trade or adjust the shares.

By the way,

Thanks for the reply.
 
There's a lot that's wrong here, Toyland, but you may not want to hear it. So I'll start with pointing out that you're putting everything you have into one stock. No professional trader would do that. You are also putting nearly 10% of your capital at risk on one trade. No professional trader would do that either.

If you're doing this for the hell of it and don't care whether you lose the money or not, that's fine. Lots of people are "recreational" traders. But if you're trying to learn how to trade in a business-like fashion, you have a lot of work to do.

--Db
 
Ya I understand I am putting all the money into one stock. The problem is I dont have the capital required to diversify. If i get positions so small even a a few point gain wont cover the 15 dollars it cost to buy/sell. Well it would but only by a few dollars. The reason I put the stop at 10, which 10% of my capital, is because thats where the resistance line is. Most books say to set your stops there. Granted I could simply trade 65 shares and the 10 dollar stoploss would be 2% of my total capital.

Yes i do want the hear it. Thats the whole idea behind posting trades on a forum. ^_^
 
If you're determined to use real money rather than paper-trade, then you may as well start out by learning how to manage risk. That means not risking more than 2% (or less) of your capital on any one trade, either by tightening your stop or reducing the number of shares you're trading.

As for the rest of it, resistance is around 11.25, not 10. Support is at 10. And the stop should not be placed at support, but just below. As to buying here, so close to the point where the price is likely to be turned back, that is a bad idea, regardless of what your indicators say.

As for the $15, if you're going to trade a small account, you need to find somebody who charges a lot less than $15.

--Db
 
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