I dropped out of sight and off this board. Not because I don't do trading, but I've come to the conclusion....at least for myself personally...that swinging for the fences just doesn't work. Especially as a swing trader. Understand that I've studied this stuff for about a decade and tried all kinds of things. I can predict some price action setups, but not enough to quit my day job...so I dabbled and dabbled and dabbled. Didn't hurt my account, but didn't really help it. I'm not broke, so I must be doing something right. (It did make my broker rich). I've read my share of books...Bar by Bar was a great book, but why don't they consider volume spikes? So lately, I just decided to take what I know and roll my own hedgefund. The purpose was just to see if I could beat the professionals. Besides, I wanted lots of dividend income...I believe in dividend income long term. So I made it out of mostly high dividend paying stocks and set up certain rules about when sell, when to buy, setting stops, etc. Very heavy in money management. It's been 25 days (18 trading days), and this thing just keeps working. But it's working better than I could have hoped. I've made about 3.5%...maybe 4% counting dividends I haven't received. The thing is, I made it in very small increments, and the chart looks almost comical...it's almost linear, and goes up to the northeast. It's like every day, another 1/4% or so. It's what I always dreamed of...just way slower. I know the market was moving up nicely during this period, but now it's transitioned and the fund didn't break stride...it's designed not to. Now I know that 3.5% doesn't sound like much. I've had hundreds (thousands?) of trades where I've made more than that in a single transaction. But the key is that this is systematic...almost automated. So is that the trick? Money management and 1% a week? Compounding is crazy powerful if you've got enough money behind it. Hitting singles instead of home runs? Or are there people out there who are consistently making more than that? Not the people about to go broke...the successful traders? SM
Making money is a priority for me. I trade at capacity in two methods and put the left overs in the third category. I sweep weekly. I teach several times a week as well. For example, today's open and tomorrow's are identical. I just changed the carryover date on the whiteboard for tomorrow's open. Today, we learned, lunched and returned to examine the close. (we are in the West) The last drift of the day was 20 points. We noted this value compared to the value for doubling capital in that market. 21 points is the doubling value. Between the opening trade and the last drift trade, there were several other reversals. Combined, these were more than the last drift trade. So today represents an integer multiple of the doubling value. I have never seen the fence you mention. I just take the full offer of the market all of the time. Dividends are trivial like costs. You seem to be sensing fear, anxiety and anger. Good for you.
Today in between the HFT signals I co located my trading. My trading signal has a symbotic algo which locates the hft orders in the system. It then front runs and interstatially executes them when there is a vacuum spread. My team can earn one tenth of one percent of the outstanding federal reserve notes per day when the market is in maintenance trading mode.
congrats smart money. i do it as my full time job, so i can't directly compare, but when i started breaking through and didn't swing for the fences, a few funny things happened. 1) my bigger and more irresponsible losses were significantly reduced. 2) i had a more steady pnl 3) i would occasionally hit a big one because i wasn't mentally worrying about the bigger loss and could properly trade. i just realized, some of my swings are still big. but they're within parameters *i'm* comfortable with on trades that are my sweet spot. it just has to be something you're comfortable with, everyone is different. just make sure that your system doesn't have consistent gains, and the potential for one huge blowup that wipes everything out. keep up the good work with your system, and good trading.
Thanks. I try to avoid too much leverage, so a blow up generally isn't in the cards for me. At the core of my system, there are some stocks that are just along for the ride that are supposed to bring in dividends. Their fluctuations keep me from focusing too closely on the heart of the system...the main driver. So maybe the success of my system so far is due to the fact that I'm not trading nervous and stressing over one thing. I have multiple things going on at once.
You have found something that's making consistent profits for you. Don't worry about what others are doing and just keep doing what you're doing. Congrats and end of story.