I have a basket of stocks about 30 or so that are large cap (10B) with heavy daily volume, and I would did analysis with some TA criteria in the evening or weekend and have a list of candidates (8-10, max 20 for example) for next day session; I also use scanner (finviz) to look for new candidates that are running fast in the morning. Often these companies would have a good run for an entire day, or 2 to 3 days in a stretch. The reason behind that is big institutes always have big plan to purchase/accumulate these heavy weight stocks for their portfolio, once they started, they need to complete the quota and that would push that stock to run for a while, so you just need to take a ride with them. Though you can't guarantee every stock, but if you have a basket of them, it is relative safe overall.
The Road to Consistency
- Thread starter trader99
- Start date
In your analogy, a hunter is a scalper/short-term trader. A farmer is an investor/long term position trader?
Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family as well.
Good points.
I would actually argue that it is not the duration of the trade rather it is how well you know the underlying you trade.
Hunters look around for opportunities anywhere everywhere, make a trade and move to another target. They use screeners to find their target based on their strategy and set up. Everything is fair game to them. Most traders are hunters.
Farmers specialize in a small number of underlying or instruments, generally hold them longer term but also trade them day in day out, month after months and year after year, like tilting their field planting and harvesting.
My good friend specializes in a single stock, he is not an insider but trading it's options day in day out for over a decade making a good living doing it. He is obviously not a hunter.
11/29/2019:
Taxable Acct: Trade Zero
=============
Realized gain: -$546
Unrealized gain: -$745.0
=============
Morning up small with $ASLN, $AUY. Then shorted too soon on $FGEN but cut losses only to see it goes all the way to over 70cents my way. But by far, the scariest trade was dip buying $UGAZ!!! Rebounded AH and still holding. Lesson: With extreme situation, gotta be patient to buy at the extreme lows. Things can go much much lower than you think.
I should have stopped when I was up peanuts this morning. Shouldn't press for trades when I'm not in sync.
Monday is another day.
Taxable Acct: Trade Zero
=============
Realized gain: -$546
Unrealized gain: -$745.0
=============
Morning up small with $ASLN, $AUY. Then shorted too soon on $FGEN but cut losses only to see it goes all the way to over 70cents my way. But by far, the scariest trade was dip buying $UGAZ!!! Rebounded AH and still holding. Lesson: With extreme situation, gotta be patient to buy at the extreme lows. Things can go much much lower than you think.
I should have stopped when I was up peanuts this morning. Shouldn't press for trades when I'm not in sync.
Monday is another day.
12/2/2019:
Taxable Acct: Trade Zero
=============
Realized gain: -$161
Unrealized gain: -$150
=============
Taxable Acct: IB
=============
Realized gain: $1260
=============
Scary hold on UGAZ on Friday. Pre-market it was doing fine. Thinking it would recover everything, but it dipped below $9. I got in on NG futures in my regular IB account made some decent scalps out of it.
Still holding onto UGAZ for a swing. Let's see. Hope to be more active and more profitable in December! Be great to close out the year with a total recovery of all the accounts that are down while I was on my learning path. Yes, nowadays, I can bang out a $1K or more daily(not every day). My best week was $14.9K. But to get to this stage I took some heavy losses. Now I'm under better risk management and have stronger alpha. Just a matter of time before I recover everything and more.
But it's important to have the right perspective else I'll be discouraged. Thanks to some ETers who encouraged me. If I look from net gain since inception then Robinhood is totally left for dead almost. But if I look it from since I got better then I'm up huge. So, I figure soon I'll recover everything and on the trajectory to my ideal $5K/day situation. Gotta keep working at it!
Taxable Acct: Trade Zero
=============
Realized gain: -$161
Unrealized gain: -$150
=============
Taxable Acct: IB
=============
Realized gain: $1260
=============
Scary hold on UGAZ on Friday. Pre-market it was doing fine. Thinking it would recover everything, but it dipped below $9. I got in on NG futures in my regular IB account made some decent scalps out of it.
Still holding onto UGAZ for a swing. Let's see. Hope to be more active and more profitable in December! Be great to close out the year with a total recovery of all the accounts that are down while I was on my learning path. Yes, nowadays, I can bang out a $1K or more daily(not every day). My best week was $14.9K. But to get to this stage I took some heavy losses. Now I'm under better risk management and have stronger alpha. Just a matter of time before I recover everything and more.
But it's important to have the right perspective else I'll be discouraged. Thanks to some ETers who encouraged me. If I look from net gain since inception then Robinhood is totally left for dead almost. But if I look it from since I got better then I'm up huge. So, I figure soon I'll recover everything and on the trajectory to my ideal $5K/day situation. Gotta keep working at it!
12/3/2019:
Taxable Acct: Trade Zero
=============
Realized gain: $1444
=============
Taxable Acct: IB
=============
Realized gain: $655
=============
Held onto UGAZ and got out at a profit pre-market. Should have held longer would have been up at least $2K+. It was a scary hold the last few days. In trying to time the bottom, it's better to wait for the dust to settle then get in.
On IB, I was just scalping NQs 1 and 2 lots. Not bad. Could have been more aggressive. BUt I was netting 6-10 NQ pts per scalp.
Had a lot of non-trading activities to attend to. So didn't trade the rest of the day.
I need to up my game! Not making as much as I should be...
Taxable Acct: Trade Zero
=============
Realized gain: $1444
=============
Taxable Acct: IB
=============
Realized gain: $655
=============
Held onto UGAZ and got out at a profit pre-market. Should have held longer would have been up at least $2K+. It was a scary hold the last few days. In trying to time the bottom, it's better to wait for the dust to settle then get in.
On IB, I was just scalping NQs 1 and 2 lots. Not bad. Could have been more aggressive. BUt I was netting 6-10 NQ pts per scalp.
Had a lot of non-trading activities to attend to. So didn't trade the rest of the day.
I need to up my game! Not making as much as I should be...
Last edited:
12/4/2019:
Taxable Acct: Trade Zero
=============
Realized gain: $233.10
=============
Taxable Acct: IB
=============
Realized gain: $529
=============
Didn't catch much action today. But in the green. Missed out on a monster move in KOD, but the spread was like 30 cents so I didn't want to get in. But of course it moved like 9 points higher after I decided the spread was too wide! ROFL. I guess it would have be "worth it". But I'm not comfortable with that kind of stock yet... Will need some practice.
Traded NQ on IB again. Catching 3-10 pts per scalp. Feel like I should up the size to have a real P&L impact.
Taxable Acct: Trade Zero
=============
Realized gain: $233.10
=============
Taxable Acct: IB
=============
Realized gain: $529
=============
Didn't catch much action today. But in the green. Missed out on a monster move in KOD, but the spread was like 30 cents so I didn't want to get in. But of course it moved like 9 points higher after I decided the spread was too wide! ROFL. I guess it would have be "worth it". But I'm not comfortable with that kind of stock yet... Will need some practice.
Traded NQ on IB again. Catching 3-10 pts per scalp. Feel like I should up the size to have a real P&L impact.
Last edited:
12/4/2019:
Taxable Acct: Trade Zero
=============
Realized gain: $233.10
=============
Taxable Acct: IB
=============
Realized gain: $529
=============
Didn't catch much action today. But in the green. Missed out on a monster move in KOD, but the spread was like 30 cents so I didn't want to get in. But of course it moved like 9 points higher after I decided the spread was too wide! ROFL. I guess it would have be "worth it". But I'm not comfortable with that kind of stock yet... Will need some practice.
Traded NQ on IB again. Catching 3-10 pts per scalp. Feel like I should up the size to have a real P&L impact.
5 lots would be ~$2500 and 10 lots $5000, your daily target! Then you don't even need to trade anything else, if you can keep at it and make it consistent like this.
Well, I don't know if my psychology will be the same on 10 lots! haha. For 1-2 lots, I can sit through the fluctuations. I don't know how people scalp for ticks unless you are doing automated HFT. Earlier on I tried scalping for ticks with very limited success.
Now, I scalp for points. But to get 10 pts I have to be wiling to sit through the heat for 3-5 points which on 10 lots is $1000 and possibly more. A random 5 pts move happens all the time on NQ. My account have to be significantly bigger for me to trade 10 lots. I'm pretty conservative in that respect. Maybe $10K for every 1 lot. I don't have $100K in IB account so 10lots is out of the question unless for very special high percentage winner setup that comes once a month. I know many ETers think $500 margin. That's just insane amount of risk in my mind. I'll gradually scale up on NQ futures. Maybe if I get really good then I can use $5K for every 1 lot.
I'll continue to focus on equities trading which I'm very comfortable swinging size(thousands to tens of thousands of shares). Maybe overtime, I will be comfortable swinging size on NQs too.
Multiple source of edges...