DSchenk

Trade 1, Short, Loss, Down 5 Points Looks like a potential bounce off 200EMA. Enter short. Stop-loss above 200EMA hit shortly after Trade 2, Short, Loss, Down 10 Points Potential bounce off Pivot; Enter short. Stop loss above Pivot hit Trade 3, Long, BE Changing direction to long above pivot. Bounces off 7340 resistance lvl and flushes back down to hit stop-loss at BE Trade 4, Long, Win, Back to 0 Trying again, enter long above Pivot. Works this time and taking profits at daily break-even. Trade 5, Long, Loss, Down 5 Points Going long at signs of bouncing off 9EMA. Hits stop loss below 9EMA on spike down Trade 6, Long, Loss, Down 11 Points Another try on green candle making a new high. Hits stop loss on breaking below 9EMA again. Trade 7, Long, Loss, Down 14 Points, Calling it a day Looks like bounce off Pivot. Enter long. Stopped out below Pivot. What a choppy chopper!

Finishing the week on a red note unfortunately. Choppy market today although 30 point move was happening in the first 30 minutes. New try, next week. 7 Trades, 1 Win, 1 BE, 5 Losses Pressed post accidentally. Trade break-down in next post

Thanks Caseynotes. My thoughts exactly. If there were no barriers in place I could certainly blow up the whole account in a matter of a few days with a 1:3 leverage My theory is that only a small percentage even makes it past the demo phase (or first month). Then they churn them out through the back door and get newbies in through the front door...$$$

Hi, would like to discuss the pros and cons of trading as a private individual vs being part of a trading company. Is anyone here who has experience in both worlds? What is the preferred option? As self-employed: Challenge to learn everything yourself Set-up your own account Trade your own money at your own risk Take home 100% of the profits, but also be liable for 100% of your losses I was in contact with a trading company recently (would rather not disclose the name at this point), which offers the below package. In a Trading Company: You are still self employed You can trade on their trading floor or remotely You need to pay an initial admin fee of £398 for setting up contract, trading account and kick-off program The kick-off program takes 5 days and discusses trading + mindset Account size they give you: £20k (after 1 week of successful trading on a demo account) Profits: 50% to yourself, 50% to the company Account:1:3 Leveraged Account (I assume spread-bet, but failed to confirm that) Target: 4% growth per month (£140 fee payable if you don't hit the target): (4% on a £20k account is £800) So in theory if you hit 4% target you take home £400 in the first month, which makes you break-even on the admin fee Do you think it is worth the £398 going through their starter course to really bring your trading skills to the next level? Or is this more a scheme for them to make money? maybe they let people go through the kick-off program, then they don't hit their account target afterwards, need to pay another £140 and get fired? Question is how much of their £20k have you lost by then and do the maths work out for them if they would play it like this If you had an offer from a trading company as a trader at hand, would you be interested in join them or rather keep trading by yourself?

Screen recorded my first 2 trades today. One win, one loss. That's life @nit2wynit You might find this useful as shows PRT platform. Seems you still struggle with it

Trades for today: 6 Trades, 4 Wins, 2 Losses; Result: Up 6 Points Bit of a choppy trading session for me with ups and downs. Although plenty of opportunities would've been there in the market. Just need to get better on capitalising them. Trade 1, Short, Win, Up 4 Points Spike down on market open (same as yesterday). Short entry and covering profits right before S1. Trade 2, Short, Loss, Back to 0 Looks like bouncing off VWAP, entry short. Breaking through VWAP. Cutting losses. Trade 3, Long, Win, Up 4 Points Noticed the perfect flag pattern forming too late. Still decided to enter. Exit close before Pivot. (Closed too early in hindsight) Trade 4, Long, Win, Up 5 Points Consolidation forming at mR1. Entry at bottom of consolidation, exit at mR1 for small profit. Trade 5, Short, Loss, Back to 0 Continues to get rejected at mR1. Deciding to go short. Get stopped out above mR1. Bad luck as reversing back to Pivot afterwards. Trade 6, Long, Win, Up 6 Points, calling it a day Bouncing off pivot; entry long. Exit on another rejection at mR1. Done for the day.

Also the right one is not a DFB, but has an expiration (sep-19). Don't trade that, trade the DFB

Sorry to hear you're struggeling nit2wynit. To answer your question. PRT doesn't show if a stock is restricted by IG or not. You find out if you place an order and it will tell you. Or you do it how I am doing it and check it via the IG API. Or I guess you can also check it in the browser platform, although that's quite a manual process. Other than that not sure why you are having issues with the stop. Are you placing the stop automatically the same time you enter the trade? Or are you placing the trade and afterwards placing stop and limit? As mentioned before, the US stocks seem to be a bit odd. I had struggles sometimes with the stop as well. They seem to need to be quite large compared to UK stocks. In regards to adjusting the screener based upon IGs limits. I don't think there are any specific limits. I guess there's some sort of risk management team, which manually restricts "hot" stocks. Why they are doing this in the first place - don't know. My guess is still this is profitability management on IG side. If there was a ticker running 200% on a day and everybody goes long and makes 3x their account deposit in profits, then worst case IG need to pay everyone their money if they request it.

GAP scanner today for US open: GAP over 4%; Float less than 50M; price between $0.1 and $5 Not a single stock which is trade-able in IG. All restricted. (I think IG is fooling us, not spread betting is for fools )

Yeah, I keep an eye on volume, that's why it's showing at the bottom of my chart However, I haven't been able to discover a strong relation between volume spikes and trend direction. Sometimes I see orders of the magnitude of 10-20k and the chart doesn't do anything special. Other times you see just average volume and the chart does huge turnarounds. For example what happened at 8.30 with that spike down and then going straight back up and making new highs vs previous candle? All happened on low volume

Ok, but surely they could just open an account with a UK provider to spread bet on it? I mean what do you need to open an SB account? UK bank account - not the hardest thing in the world to get. UK address - easy to get as well. You can set up both remotely these days. If that would multiple their profits 5x, surely worth the struggle setting up? I know they also open accounts with other providers which are outside of the US to go around the PDT rule and stuff. Maybe they are just not aware that the SB dream exists at all? Maybe someone should tell em

So I purchased the Level 2 data feeds for US equities, however can't see any level 2 data in L2? (see screenshots) Which is odd, because if it recognises you don't have access to level 2 data it shows it, like in the screenshot with Evraz. (I only purchased L1 for UK data) Does anyone else have the same bug? Is it a bug?

Regs really are the worst What happened to our free world

Right. Thanks again. Midnight to midnight it is then going forwards. (except Mondays) The 'm' indexed pivot points are "mid points". Something available in PRT. I figured as the FTSE doesn't move that much, R2, R3 and S2, S3 are hardly ever relevant. And instead I have a closer look at the MidR1 and MidS1. Do you think it doesn't make sense to take these into account, because probably less traders are having those on their charts?

Sorry, with CFD I actually meant share-dealing. Always thought that is the same. But it seems CFD is like spread-betting just a bit different. Let's talk about share dealing vs SB. Same ticker: EVR (Evraz) Black window on left side is share dealing with a DMA platform. Spread is 0.8p. White window on right side is Spread Betting with PRT. Spread is 1.8p. If I were to deal on the DMA platform I have to pay £5 (£8 if you don't frequently trade) for the transaction. If I were to deal on the SB platform I pay the larger spread, which is £1 per quantity traded. Let's say I have an account of £10k. This means on DMA I can trade about 2000 shares at current price. On SB I have enough margin to trade a qty of 100. Let's say the price moves from 510 to 515. On DMA I make £100 in profit. Minus 2x £5 commission for buy and sell, that's £90. On SB I make £500 in profit, because I have a 1:5 leverage applied. But I need to take the bigger spread into account. So minus £1 per quantity, so it's more like £400 profit. On DMA I need to tax my profits at the end of the year. So the £90 are more like somewhere between £55 and £80 in profits after tax. So is the point of spread betting purely that I have leverage available which magnifies my profits (and losses, lol)? And if this is the case, why would Ross and those dudes not do spread betting instead of share dealing?

Looking forward to seeing your trade reports! Maybe we can share some knowledge here! My trades for today: 6 Trades, 4 Wins, 1 Break-even, 1 Loss New record of reaching daily target: 11 minutes (previous was 14 minutes) Trade 1, Long, Profit, up 3 Points Spike down at market open, with reversal at 7300 support lvl. Entry on way up. Exit at VWAP Trade 2, Long, Profit, up 20 Points, daily target reached Again spiking down to 7300, I play exactly the same game. Entry on way back up. First had target again at VWAP, but then I saw the GBPUSD spiking down in a massive red candle. Indicator that the FTSE is shooting up shortly. I removed my target and voila, FTSE was shooting up. I took profits at my daily target lvl. Trade 3, Long, Loss, back to up 14 Points, **** When I hit target within the first hour of the day, I usually try to then place another trade, where I try to set my stop-loss to break-even as soon as possible. Went long at break of mR1. Didn't work out. Exit on pulling back down Trade 4, Short, Profit, up 22 Points Straight went into short at red candle making a new low. Took profits at Pivot Trade 5, Long, Break-even Looks like reversal at Pivot. Long entry. Set stop-loss to break-even which got hit shortly after. Trade 6, Long, Profit, up 22 Points (small profit, not even half a point) Still looks like it would trend above Pivot. So another long trade. I saw too much consolidation though and exited quickly. Mistake in hindsight as afterwards shot up. Still a bit confused with Pivot points though. It seems like even with the same formula there are two options to calculate it. Either you take the full dataset (midnight to midnight) or you only take the during market hours dataset (8.00-16.30) My platform today showed with standard settings (midnight to midnight): P: 7318 R1: 7345 S1: 7286 However, when setting to calculate only based on market hours (8.00-16.30) I get the following: P: 7320 R1: 7348 S1: 7290 Online both seems to exit. First two websites use market hours, the latter one the full dataset. http://www.livecharts.co.uk/Members/display_stock_pivots.php and https://uk.investing.com/technical/indices-pivot-points P: 7320 R1: 7349 S1: 7291 https://www.dailyfx.com/ftse-100 P: 7318 R1: 7345 S1: 7286 @Caseynotes Can you recommend which one is the better one to take? Take it easy Dan

Ok so Ross just said it's been another slow day today. Have I really caught two slow days in a row with my trade the US open experiment? Might need to give it yet another try tomorrow 😀

Well Spread Betting isn't free either. The spread comes at a cost which you pay every time you enter a trade. Let's take ACRS (Aclaris Therapeutics) for example. Spread in SP is 3 Points. Spread in CFD is only 1 Point. This means Ross (or anyone using CFDs) can enter a trade at let's say 2.01 and sell later at 2.10. Makes 9 points profit. If you enter and exit at the exact same moments with SB you enter at 2.03 and sell at 2.08. Makes only 5 points profit. That's 4 point difference. Now if you trade with £10k again, you can go with size 150 to fulfil your margin requirements. 1 point is now £150 worth. Meaning you just paid for this trade 4 x £150 = £600. While Ross pays £5 per trade or so. Of course you need to pay taxes on CFDs. Let's say 40%. 9 points profit x £150 = £1350. Taxes of 40% = £540 So bottom line with SB you paid £600 for the trade, while with CFDs you would've paid only £545. Now, tell me which one is cheaper

That means your stop distance is either too large or too small. Try using a different one and see if that works. I also had problems sometimes figuring it out with those US stocks. Seems to be more straightforward with UK equities or indices. If you are on demo, maybe place a few trades on UK stocks, just to get a hang of the platform, before playing with the US ones

I get what you are saying nit2wynit. I don't doubt it is possible to trade gap and go setups on the US market open. What I'm saying is, if that's what you want to do, then maybe look for a broker which doesn't restrict trading on 90% of the stocks which gap up. Also, I don't see lots of different opportunities on the UK open, so why bother trading the US open in the afternoon when you can do the same in the morning? (But maybe that's just me - I'm a morning person - in the afternoon I want to focus on other ventures). And I have been trading the UK open for over 1 year now. In regards to scanners. I was scanning pre-market with exactly the same as Ross. Gap up more than 5% Once market opens I have on PRT: gap scanner: more than 5% Momentum scanner: more than 10% up on the day Volatility scanner: more than 2% move in last 10 minutes. Sure you can optimise these scanners to your personal preference. My goal on the FTSE is to make 20 points per day. The FTSE moves on average between 60 and 100 points per day, so that should be easily doable, if you know how. With a £10k account, you can trade quantities of 25, meaning a 20 points move is £500. That would be £2,500 a week and £10k a month. In other words 100% return per month. And you say you can't make a living out of it? How much do you need, lol - Maybe sell that Bentley

Ok, nobody can say I didn't at least try trade the US open. But, don't think I'm gonna stick to it. Reasons: - Out of 10 stocks on the gap scanner you usually can trade 1-2 and even those are likely restricted on the short side - From my 2 days experience (lol), haven't seen any insane movements which you wouldn't see on the UK open. So not sure what exactly is the point of the US open if it comes with the same set-ups as the UK. (But maybe I also got unlucky and caught two very quiet days - nit2wynit let me know once things move again, maybe will have another look at it then) - Spreads are way too big for my taste - Level 2 data doesn't seem to work for me, even though I purchased the feeds. Not sure what's going on or if this is a bug? Does anyone else managed to get L2 working for US stocks? On the plus side: - You can scan gappers pre-market which you can't really do in the UK, cause there's no pre-market only the 10min auction. Cons outweigh pros for me here. Back to trading the FTSE100

Here's the answer to your question "You can get access to ProRealTime charts at no extra cost if you transact at least four times in a given month. However, if you don't meet this requirement, or your trading activity is of extremely low value, then a £30 per month fee will apply on the last day of every calendar month." Nobody has ever found out what "extremely low value" means, but you should be fine if you place 4 times per month. I assume the 4 trades need to be on live and not on demo, otherwise what's the point

Probably need to screen record a video once how I trade with it. Find it quite intuitive to be honest What's on the watchlist today for US open? Can't find a lot. Only one so far is ACRS. All the other gappers are trade restricted by IG - what is going on...

Alright, thanks Casey

Motley Fool released this article yesterday: https://www.fool.co.uk/investing/2019/09/16/tempted-by-day-trading-heres-why-you-shouldnt-bother/ Tempted by day trading? Here’s why you shouldn’t bother In short: From a sample of almost 20,000 people, they found that the proportion of successful day traders fell as the number of days they traded increased. In other words, people became worse at trading the more often they did it. The researchers then focused on the 1,551 individuals who continued to trade in the equities futures market for more than 300 days. Based on the data, only a minute proportion (0.4%) earned more than a typical bank teller in Brazil in a day ($54) with the best-performing individual taking home $310. A staggering 97% of this sub-group lost money. Is spread betting for fools?