Magna, hi - I use .3 to .5 over the OHLC prices as entries. MSFT's last session low was at around 55, so I used 55.5+ as the long entry trigger, here's a bigcharts picture:
http://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/quickchart/quickchart.asp?symb=msft&sid=0&o_symb=msft&freq=6&time=2
eg draw a line at the 55, the whole number nearest the prev. days' low, I used the 55.5+ as the entry long trigger, which wasn't reached today.
I find that these types of patterns tend to work well in *screening out the signal/noise for entries* and produce the best types of results. I've found that in this chop the last 18 months 1/2 the battle is knowing what the technical screens are, eg only trading stocks that are strong enough to do breakouts/breakdowns for 80% of the trades. I use fibo retrace bounces for the other 20%, these are less frequent though, as I am *finally at long last* becoming a breakout/breakdown vs bounce trader.
It's still an ongoing discipline issue with me, though - I like trying to nab bounces (eg I made $$ an exds .36 long entry sell .65 swing trade today). Doing less of those, and learning to trade and route larger size, like 2-5K vs the 400-500 shares I first learned with, are my personal areas for improvement in trading.
There are of course other things to look for, but the basic strategy of using .3 to .5 over whole numbers (the prev days' low for gap down opens, the prev days' high for opens within the prev days' range etc) works out well.
Some more details are in the active trader mag that was published in the most recent issue, also online at:
http://www.activetradermag.com/calhoun.htm
Thanks for the questions, good to be of help in explaining things.. of course I welcome any constructive trading-related critique ("ok ken that sounds good but what about when xyz happens etc?") or questions... as with any trading strategy, it's good to kick the ideas around and modify/improve them ...
That's a worthwhile goal in posting the ideas, to get everyone to pull apart, critique, and improve upon whatever works.. a strength of the online trading community, eg many traders working to sort out what works best and in what situations.
fwiw, I use ma lines as a secondary entry indicator mostly for swing trades vs daytrading ta indicator.
Hitman: agree, that used to happen to me a lot too, I've found over the years that now I spend 80% of my time doing the premarket TA work, and 20% executing trades, almost all during the 9:40 til 11am timeframe ... that helped me immensely...
eg I am always up at 2am local time here in Hawaii (8am EST) studying the charts and premarket trading patterns, determining where I will enter and setting software alerts etc.. I reeallly dont like getting up at 2am, it bites. sigh. price o paradise.
So, shifting much of my time to preparing w/ta work before the market opens each day, seems to help, that way I can spend energy on order execution and position sizing, the mechanics of trade management, vs. looking for correct trade entries, as the market unfolds each day.
Of course, I'll also use market internals like the TRINQ and sector relative strength/weakness to help refine realtime entries, along with the tape/time&sales for each.
trade on,
ken