I thought I would start this thread as a centralised depositary for people's trading strategies. It will allow us to explicitly see described eachother's styles.
I used to primarily be an intraday trader but I am gradually converting to swingtrading, since I believe the profit potential there is better. With slightly bigger stop losses than a daytrader, a swingtrader has the opportunity to multiply his capital for much larger gains over the course of 2-5 days. Also, the market structure has changed, making for somewhat choppy intraday conditions, which are smoothed out over the course of days.
There are many successful published swingtraders out there, each with their own distinct styles. The main ones are: Tony Oz, Linda Raschke, Alan Farley, Toni Turner. Some of these published traders are intraday too.
Intraday published daytraders include: Jea Yu, Chris Farrell, Chris Lewis.
Other published traders / teachers:
Money management: there is only one worth mentioning... Van Tharp ... I wrote a review of him in the Books section of this site
My personal style is evolving to enter Tony Oz set-ups (in particular his bottom fisher and skyscraper set-ups) on an intraday basis and swing them for 2-5 days if they pan out well by the close. You can read about his styles on stockjunkie.com. Like him, I feel that these set-ups (when entered with the intraday precision that only full-time traders have) offer a better reward:risk than anything else that I have seen. I think Tony Oz has some great approaches but, if they are not for you, I would highly recommend Alan Farley too. I rank Oz and Farley pretty equally, but my personality is more aligned with Tony's approaches.
I started my life as a trader trading intraday consolidation breakouts when they were in line with the futures ... I used 5min charts. In the beginning, this technique worked well but, as more and more traders started playing them, the style lost its power. My hit rate went from 70% to more like 40%, and my average profit per trade declined too. People ended up fading these breakouts, and also fading the fades, resulting in a pretty useless strategy.
I then evolved to trading liquid stocks intraday that made moves with the futures and/or their sectors. In the beginning, I thought I had found the panacea for my trading account... over time I found the technique to be less and less profitable.... the sector leaders moved too quickly for me (and when i got in the stocks were invariably 'held' fixed by the specialist / market makers). So I gravitated to the second tier stocks.... with lower floats, they often moved quickly... over time however, the specialists wised up and 2nd tier stock movements became more erratic, lower beta and overall less predictable.
Intraday trend hunting for non-index tracking stocks was my next technique... sometimes I find them (even these days), and when I do, I play them. However, this is of little use as a core strategy since there isn't a consistency in the oppotunities that arise.
Market ranges have contracted, strong intraday trends have become fewer, and market makers / specialists have wised up. I needed an approach that could operate independently of any of these drawbacks to intraday trading. Swingtrading seems to fit the bill. Don't get me wrong, I still daytrade when the occasional gift arises, but my volume and focus is now on the bigger timeframe: swingtrading.
As a full-timer, I can get in on swingtrades and control them with greater precision than people who swing trade coming back home from their work. I often have a couple of points advantage on them as a result of intraday entries, and I have much better risk control, since I got in earlier and can get out IMMEDIATELY the moment things go wrong.
Anyways, that was my 2 cents. Please feel free to post your strategies on this centralised forum. Also, please feel free to constructively criticise any of my comments or any comments of future contributors on this forum.
I used to primarily be an intraday trader but I am gradually converting to swingtrading, since I believe the profit potential there is better. With slightly bigger stop losses than a daytrader, a swingtrader has the opportunity to multiply his capital for much larger gains over the course of 2-5 days. Also, the market structure has changed, making for somewhat choppy intraday conditions, which are smoothed out over the course of days.
There are many successful published swingtraders out there, each with their own distinct styles. The main ones are: Tony Oz, Linda Raschke, Alan Farley, Toni Turner. Some of these published traders are intraday too.
Intraday published daytraders include: Jea Yu, Chris Farrell, Chris Lewis.
Other published traders / teachers:
Money management: there is only one worth mentioning... Van Tharp ... I wrote a review of him in the Books section of this site
My personal style is evolving to enter Tony Oz set-ups (in particular his bottom fisher and skyscraper set-ups) on an intraday basis and swing them for 2-5 days if they pan out well by the close. You can read about his styles on stockjunkie.com. Like him, I feel that these set-ups (when entered with the intraday precision that only full-time traders have) offer a better reward:risk than anything else that I have seen. I think Tony Oz has some great approaches but, if they are not for you, I would highly recommend Alan Farley too. I rank Oz and Farley pretty equally, but my personality is more aligned with Tony's approaches.
I started my life as a trader trading intraday consolidation breakouts when they were in line with the futures ... I used 5min charts. In the beginning, this technique worked well but, as more and more traders started playing them, the style lost its power. My hit rate went from 70% to more like 40%, and my average profit per trade declined too. People ended up fading these breakouts, and also fading the fades, resulting in a pretty useless strategy.
I then evolved to trading liquid stocks intraday that made moves with the futures and/or their sectors. In the beginning, I thought I had found the panacea for my trading account... over time I found the technique to be less and less profitable.... the sector leaders moved too quickly for me (and when i got in the stocks were invariably 'held' fixed by the specialist / market makers). So I gravitated to the second tier stocks.... with lower floats, they often moved quickly... over time however, the specialists wised up and 2nd tier stock movements became more erratic, lower beta and overall less predictable.
Intraday trend hunting for non-index tracking stocks was my next technique... sometimes I find them (even these days), and when I do, I play them. However, this is of little use as a core strategy since there isn't a consistency in the oppotunities that arise.
Market ranges have contracted, strong intraday trends have become fewer, and market makers / specialists have wised up. I needed an approach that could operate independently of any of these drawbacks to intraday trading. Swingtrading seems to fit the bill. Don't get me wrong, I still daytrade when the occasional gift arises, but my volume and focus is now on the bigger timeframe: swingtrading.
As a full-timer, I can get in on swingtrades and control them with greater precision than people who swing trade coming back home from their work. I often have a couple of points advantage on them as a result of intraday entries, and I have much better risk control, since I got in earlier and can get out IMMEDIATELY the moment things go wrong.
Anyways, that was my 2 cents. Please feel free to post your strategies on this centralised forum. Also, please feel free to constructively criticise any of my comments or any comments of future contributors on this forum.