One of the reasons I like Position Trading

What kind opf trader are you?

  • I am a position trader

    Votes: 132 27.7%

  • I am a swing trader(overnight)

    Votes: 137 28.8%

  • I am a day trader

    Votes: 207 43.5%
  • Total voters
    476
Heres a solution for you...play the short side too.


Quote from cashmoney69:

[B
I would like to know if any of you that currently position trade have switched over to swing or day trading recently.

I would like to hold longer... more money..less expenses :D, but my attitude of the market is rather negative right now.

I think the day traders are actually coming out ahead because they're not holding over night and not exposed to all the crap thats going on. They just play the stock for what its worth in the short term which is probably the best thing to do sense the market is doing great on day, then down three days in a row the next.

- nathan [/B]
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I think too many people on ET try to trade in products they know nothing about, commodities, indexes, etc etc.

It all sounds "big time" to tell all of your friends you trade gold, oil, or soy beans, LOL. The companies you are trading with actually use the product!!! They will kill you everytime.

It is very difficult for a large hedge fund to make a lot of money because of it's size.

Small smart traders can always beat the big guys. Speed boat around a battle ship.

It sounds like most on here think that holding a stock "overnite" is position trading, LOL.

I have a personal friend who has made over $1,000,000 in the last year with probably not more than 10 stocks, if that.

This trader uses a modified IBD, CANSLIM approach but only stays with the winners at the top. Likes cup/handle set ups

GOOG, AAPL, HANS, NTRI are some of the stocks. Same method that Dan Zanger uses.

Told me to buy HANS at 80, I thought if was too extended. Only 120 points left to go, LOL. She was in at $40.

Get on a thoroughbred and ride, Sally, ride.

Most people over think the market.

So don't despair and buy in to the negative crowd.

It takes hard work.
Good money management talent.
Reasonable capitalization
Basic understanding of how business works
Trade with the trend.

SteveD
 
Quote from SteveD:

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So don't despair and buy in to the negative crowd.
xxsnipxx
Trade with the trend.
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Steve, if the trend was down would you say that you should go with the negative crowd? Or did you mean something different by "negative crowd."

As a side comment:
Canslim works very well in the market conditions we've seen in the last two years. It also worked well in the last phase of the tech bull. It doesn't get much press in the intermediate phase.
 
There is a lot to be said for using small unleveraged diversified positions to capture large moves with small downside vs using leverage to make money off smaller moves.

Also it is much easier to automate and let the setups come to you when position trading. Dramatically skewed risk:reward profiles exist for only seconds intraday, whereas in position trading you can walk over and pick up an option no market maker would write i.e no time decay and no fixed strike.

Edit: Just seen Cuttens post above about how hard it is and needing to see 2 or 3 cycles and how dammed hard it is to hold all the way through in reality. Yep, I have seen stocks that were up 100% go back to zero, some I took half out on, some I watched the profits melt. If I had know last time around what I know now.......Livermore's great and overlooked point is that you can't override you nervous system hard wiring so you have to trade in a way that it can't trip you up. His point was get in at the
beginning of the move (i.e as it comes off a base) or be shaken out with attendant stop costs. It is a lot easier to sit through a shakeout taking place 100% above your entry than one taking place right around your entry. Also I have many small positions with entries staggered across time rather than being concentrated.

I operate below the liquidity radar screen of most hedge funds and in deeply cyclical retail dominated markets where being patient where everyone else wants action this day is an edge. I trade manipulated stocks because the predictability is greater. Manipulators make money distributing at a higher price than their accumulation price. What most retail traders don't understand is that it takes time to offload the entire float. It is not easy as they can smash a stock down, or the same move on their part can be for different reasosns.There is a whole class of less sophisticated players than me using less sophisticated technology. I know what systems the players use and what info it gives. I can
be alerted to a trade while it is just me and the guy ramping it who have spotted it. In HSI it's just me and people of similar/greater skill\ and the "big hands" i.e I am lunch.
I doubt that I could make money position trading fundamentally driven stocks which can easily meander down 10% - what do you do take the stop knowing it can meander back up again with no new info in between ? As for riding the trend in oil or gold through all the shakeouts with futures type leverage...................
 
I mean negative in letting anyone else's opinion stop you from trading.

It is a very simple business.

Buy a stock and when it goes up sell it.

If it is not going to go up don't buy it.

Will Rogers' method, LOL.

Apply good money management skills and treat trading as any other small business enterprise that one may start.

CANSLIM as, O'Neill points our has to have all of the 7 factors in place. M is for "market" so, yes, one has to have the right market to trade. Shorting is, of course, a different market. Not sure what we are in now.

I personally feel everyone is very bullish but they need a reason to buy. Earnings will make it a bit clearer. I wanted to buy some AAPL late on Friday but just got "chicken". I could see the Sunday paper saying Isreal invades Lebanon on massive scale.


SteveD
 
Crocodiles were around with the dinosaurs and they are still around. Small dinosaurs then and Wildebeest now i.e. something, will always have to go down to the river to drink, and if you are cold blooded you can wait it out until they do.

My position trading strategy. The market comes to me and I deal on my own terms, or I don't deal. Again, Livermore, a position trader in later life effectively makes this point. Ever seen a crocodile galloping across the grasslands after Wildebeest?
 
Trading is a very simple business.

But it is not an easy business. That's the difference.


"the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent"

many an ex-trader has learned that lesson.


I believe that every trader should read Bill O'Neill's books. He is absolutely the best on explaining how the stock market actually works on a day to day basis.

You certainly don't have to follow his methods but a hell a lot of institutional investors do listen to him.

SteveD
 
Forsake leverage and make up for this by positioning in stocks that historically go up 3x at least every cycle. Your overall position can be large, but keep individual positions laughably small. This means many positions and they must be in stocks that fit a certain profile. You are making up for the supposed risk from not being able to easiily sell and re-enter on corrections by having your entry at a long term base or not at all.


Whoever said: "if you don't feel you are trading too small you are trading too large" knew what he was talking about.
 
Quote from mokwit:

Forsake leverage and make up for this by positioning in stocks that historically go up 3x at least every cycle.

Mokwit,

How do you find/choose the stocks that fit this profile? Do you consider IBD a useful tool, or use a scanning tool, etc?

Thanks, amodies
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