DavyJones

July 30, 2020

cheers man, will watching as I type . I am jumping around from strategy to strategy too much.

I will start a new testing plan tomorrow, For an hour a day, I will go through a charts bar by bar testing an example strategy like the one above, and see if I can narrow in from there

July 30, 2020

On 24/07/2020 at 23:10, nit2wynit said:

However, finding stocks to trade Intra Day or Swing isn't at all a problem. Buying Shares is a breeze too.

I've proven to myself very recently that with only £20 you can generate a profit Spread Betting small cap stock.

My problem has most often been not taking profit when it's there and holding out for more. My current win rate is 45%, but my PL is 1.4. However, my Shares account was up 30% this week but I'm anticipating a full reversal on all of them.

I have come to the preliminary conclusion that only fast moving stocks or big news you can make money DTing. I did ok on EasyJet recently and FTSE is absolutely tanking today (i got in late) but for the majority of stocks is just not worth trying .

I think I will start looking more towards swing trading in the next month and easy off DT. The overnight risk is a concern but as you say you can always use Share dealing but with UK stocks you have the charges. US I find much better

July 30, 2020

On 25/07/2020 at 21:00, shuheb said:

thank you for sharing your experience on day trading. I must say you are absolutely spot on, i'm experiencing the exact same problems, i've been trading on my live account for a month and i'm loosing money. the problem is me failing to deal with my emotions, not being able to create and follow an effective plan, lack of discipline etc.

It definitely gets better ..... very slowly.... , I still make stupid and emotional mistakes and its those that wipe out the last 10 profitable trades . I find with those trades you really need to write down and force yourself to revisit it, even if it's just have a look at the MA or something , it's too easy to block out the bad trades and move on always living on a promise of a win. Hence the YT gurus.

On 26/07/2020 at 19:27, JackSparrow said:

t's interesting to see you've worked on the trading floor. When I first started, I met heaps of guys who worked as analysts, worked in finance, worked at goldman but none of them seemed to know much about day trading or how to do it. Day trading itself is a whole different ball game. A lot of these guys seems to loose a lot of money themselves anyway. I guess they are all trained just to do one thing and just that.

Indeed I have a PhD in maths, was CFA registered in London but really it doesn't give you much advantage . In fact it can quite a disadvantage as you can be quite arrogant thinking you know more than the local plumber at trading . This ends up being costly as they wont admit they are wrong. You get stock in your previous way of thinking Also when I worked in banking TA is often looked as financial alchemy, or reading star signs. It's often scorned at by the boffins as stuff for the low IQ. I was like that too i have to say. E.g fibonacci series, means diddly squat in reality and there is now logic to the number series applied to finance , If you called it 三角 which means a lot of a Chinese person., It's a similar fundamental concept and predates Fibonacci by a long way but no western person would even consider it on their charts.

But the point is that many others traders do have faith in it and draw support resistance lines around it so will influence their decisions

On 26/07/2020 at 19:27, JackSparrow said:

Also, to be honest, in DT/swing trading, like every business, you need lots of money to make decent money. If you're only trading with $10-20k I find it quite tiring, perhaps make $80-100k a year? That's why they say it's always easier with someone elses money, get 5% on $4 million and you're good for the year.

I guess that's the advantage of SB / CFD, if you are really good you can leverage out but the changes of being good are slim

July 30, 2020

1 hour ago, mark27 said:

On PRT you cant adjust what prices you see so they are all Mid prices .so if using their chart you have to account for the spread.

So for example if trading Dax the spread is 1.2 .If you see the high of the day is 12000 and want to go long at that price you have to enter 12000.6 which is half the spread.

So basically you have to add half the spread to orders .Its easier if what your trading is fixed spread its always the same,But if you are trading something with variable spreads its harder to account for it.

Sorry Mark really not following , every trade has the BID ASK attached in PRT, it usually fills at this price

July 30, 2020

54 minutes ago, Caseynotes said:

Buying the close of a strong bull bar is perfectly reasonable when expecting continuation upward, the stop is the problem.

Initially your stop was at A in my pic but then after a new low at B you moved it up but before price had passed the new prior high, that would have been the better time to raise it.

As it was you joined the stops of those new entries at the pin bar new low (B).

Everyone knows where the stops are, a big player can hit them with precision.

The large red bar down was a stop hunt to capture those long contracts (including yours), a strong bear bar with no attempt at continuation but steady buying instead.

It is very usual for your entry to get tested but I don't like to see price go to far towards my stop, I would avoid the break even stops and if not willing to leave it below the low would put it behind the entry rather than on it.

cheers, I am playing around with stops , its hard to know what to do . I found that with stops, you often get knocked out by a sharp downward wick, In fact trailing stops seem to have this effect, not sure. Then if you don't use them you need to be watching the screen all day. I guess this is why back testing is somewhat limited as you are missing the real time limits and stops which influence the price

On that particular trade yes I moved the stop to breakeven but as the price approached it I thought about removing the stop, then talked myself out of it for lack of discipline.

I need to read up on the mechanics of what specifically happens under spread bet. Did you have an suggestions for a link?

July 30, 2020

3 minutes ago, mark27 said:

No I know the band is the spread at the current time but on PRT if you hit Buy exactly when price touches your yellow line looking at that chart ,that is not the price you get in at

That why the little arrow is higher on you buy and lower on your sell

I don't quite get that, that's the point of the ASK price, sure there can be some slippage but its not a certainty to be filled at a worse price that the ASK,

In any case that doesn't explain in a highly liquid market why the order gets filled at the extreme of the 2min wicks. Law of probability would suggest it somewhere in the middle.

July 30, 2020

Exact same thing Silver trade from 2 days ago. Its as well I keep notes on all my trades.

July 30, 2020

8 minutes ago, mark27 said:

You do know the PRT prices are stuck on the Mid and not Ask or Bid so its never going to look like you get in at the right price looking at the charts

Hi Mark, no that's what the green band is showing, the Bid ASK spread, they match the online platform exactly , You have to add it on to the chart

July 30, 2020

Wow I just made a trade on this exact topic . Didn't see this thread!

July 30, 2020

This is probably a case of paranoia but I'll ask anyway

I trade gold and silver mostly and many times this phenomenon occurs. I put on a trade at a MARKET ORDER and it seems to fill right at the extreme wick of a candle and when I put a stop on it it's like the price reaches down to knock it out .

Look at the chart (The time axis is because I am in asia), In the last hour I put on a LONG Silver trade [AUGUSD] with ProRealTime , I bought in at the (orange circle) I am 99.99% certain I put it on at the yellow line price . Once the trade moved in my favour, I put a stop on at break even (blue circle). It ENTERED and EXITED exactly at the wick, both times

On a such a extremely liquid market I don't see how this happens so much. The paranoid side of me is thinking this is rigged somehow. It's just happens too many times to be a coincidence, computer bots, IG ? Surely with the amount of orders going in on gold I can't be landing on the extreme of a candle wick

What's the explanation for this or am I a candidate for the flat earth society ?

July 29, 2020

Leverage is a very common occurrence in everyday lives. Majority of Britain's >30yo I'd imagine are financially leveraged via a mortgage .

July 29, 2020

On 18/06/2020 at 21:22, Seanogey said:

I have stopeed using a US Broker and moved to IG. For Forex and Equity Swing trades the platform seems fine. However with recent volitility on shares premarket I've tried to trade and the platform dosnt let me trade premarket. IS ther some option to enable this at an additional cost ?

Even after the bell it is difficult to trade dips without hot keys . IS there an alternative WIndows based platform with hotkeys available ?

I use ProRealTime, much better than the web platform in myview. It's a bit 'French' in that nothing is in the obvious place and seems like its old technology that has just been patched up for a decade now .

Its clunky but works

Further if you want to day trade on IG, its a hard task. The spreads on SB are just too high and you can only do very liquid stocks FX or commodities, You often need fast movers / e.g. silver . I found reducing risk / reward down and getting hit rate higher is a better strategy.

I somethings trade using share dealing account but can only go long, tighter spreads and no leverage but possible to make money. HOWEVER , the FX spread IG charge and if you get an Adverse FX movement, itr can wipe out a potentially profitable trade

In essence you are looking for big movers, scalping forget it

July 29, 2020

same questions, will bump this up

July 23, 2020

8 hours ago, Breakstate said:

Thanks for this reply.

"As I understand it a 'point' is the 1st whole integer number. i.e, the first digit before the decimal place". But the example you gave is that 1 point is 2 decimal places to the RIGHT of the decimal place - i.e. 1 point = 1 penny.

So I read from this that to calculate the value of a single point, I convert the total price into cents and use 1 cent = 1 point. So Amazon at BUY of 3145.00 - at stop loss of 4500 points puts the stop at 3100.00.

Tested this today, seems to hold, so I would clarify the explanation to read: "A 'point' is the 1st whole integer number. i.e, the first digit before the decimal place, when the price is converted to cents or pents (i.e. whole dollar or pound price x 100). Examples:

BUY $1.20 a share = 120.00 cents. A stop loss of 5 points puts the stop at 115.00 or $1.15.

BUY $3145.56 a share = 314,545 cents. A stop loss of 4545 points puts the stop at 310,000 cents or $3100.00

Please anyone, let me know if I've got this wrong!

If it makes it easier just use stops and limits in £,$ via the option in IG, that way you can be sure what exactly you're risk/ reward is money

July 21, 2020

Yeah it's confusing. As I understand it a 'point' is the 1st whole integer number. i.e, the first digit before the decimal place

Take Barclays, The value at the moment is £1.19 per share but expressed as pence 119.44 on the trading platform (CFD, SB, share dealing). Obviously we can't have £1.1944 in real monetary terms so a rounding takes place when you actually cash out

so if you do a trade of 'BUY £1 a point', that means for every 1 penny rise (on the screen 119.44 -> 120.44) in the price of barclays you make a £1, or in other words, you are 100 times leverage, Look at the 2 examples, The both work out the same , For SB it's easier to understand, for CFD to produce the same affected you need to theoretically buy 100 shares.

Of course you could just use sharedealing go out and buy 100 shares of barclays at £1.1944 a share and when the price rises to £1.2444, sell them, so you earn 5p x 100 shares = £5. But this way you need to fork out £1,194.44 . Using SB or CFD you only need £23.86 in your account

All 3 options have their advantages and disadvantages

For US stocks they are quoted in $ not cents so Amazon is 3251, i.e. $3,251

July 21, 2020

Thanks, certainly things looking brighter here in China, industry is getting back to full steam . I think they are in a much better position that Europe for 2nd waves of viruses. It's happened a few times buy area get shut down in a flash. I think they have learned their lessons

I just sold out my Vanguard FTSE 250 ETF shares which are starting to tank. Dump it into China shares

July 21, 2020

Dead obvious for you experienced folks on here but updating my trade notes from yesterday, I realised what a silly mistake I was make .

I was trying to test a trade off the open, I noticed from the screeners on PRT that the QQQ was down from previous day's close. I saw 3 big Red bars on 2 min time frame with large volume so I thought I'd test a quick SHORT trade. In and out in 5 minutes at £1 a point got me £25, cool.

However looking at the bigger picture this morning, that is looking at the 2m, 15m and 1 hour chart I realised it was a foolish trade to take for a few reasons

Spreads too wide for a short trade,
I only was looking at the 2min time frame (right 1/3rd window of attachment)
Most important, a very strong Bull trend has been going on

I got luckily this but it highlighted the need for

reviewing trades and seeing what happens after trades close out
Top down approach
when doing short trades like that , you don't have time to think so perhaps a checklist is in order

Anyway hope it helps other less experience people like myself

PS: if I let that run all day following the MA and trailing stop it could've been a very profitable trade

July 21, 2020

8 hours ago, keebs01 said:

The pts away system on FTSE and some UK stocks also reduces the amount of management you can have on your SL and therefore risk/reward. I can't always watch a trade every second and run the risk of losing a lot more than a solid stop would afford me.

Yeah I get that there are minimum distances for stops, thus it impacts your Risk / Reward ratio but realistically the major stumbling block are the large spreads, not the stops.

In any case there are loads of stocks, FX, commodities to choose from that will keep your risk to less that a few quid, 0.5% account is £10 for case. Its just a suggestions so feel free to ignore it but I think you're focusing on the wrong aspect of trading, Sure your stop may be further away than your like but if there is a high probability of hitting it then the trade shouldn't have been put on in the first place. I see many of these scalping style trades, or trading right off the open use very tight stops , Under the IG platform this doesn't seems like a non starter but again unless you have s high confidence of the trade moving fast in your direction (to cover spreads), it's probably a trade to pass up on. Also in my view there a lot of good other strategies on lower priced liquid stocks, to test where stops really are not a issue at all even for small accounts

If fact I found that for things like silver you need a fairly wide stop to avoid that sudden spike that knocks you out while the trend continues in your favour, perhaps its trading bots that are targeting these things, dunno

July 20, 2020

On 17/07/2020 at 21:25, keebs01 said:

It's disappointing to see IG change their minimum points per trade on the spread bet account. As a new trader who is looking to open a small account (£2k) its now impossible to manage my risk on the majority of potential trades.

just use stops as tight as you can ,

FTSE 0.5pt min, stop 4 point = £2 quid.

Lloyds: £1 a point, min stop 0.2 = 20p

how low do you want it ? 🙂 You can always exit the trade anytime

July 20, 2020

40 minutes ago, dmedin said:

SB/CFD on shares is uniquely unsuited to this because of the massive spreads. I think the Americans accomplish it by actually buying and selling on leverage (or with options), but of course then they run the risk of getting it wrong and owing their broker thousands/tens of thousands on a bad trade.

I was looking at a few live stream, the d@vil is in the detail

1) They all use large capital sizes ($50k min) to scrape out a few hundred dollars. People get fooled by the click bait titles, e.g Oliver Velez "I made $5k in the first 30mins of the open trading Facebook". Look closely at the screen, pause the video, and you see that he bought 2000 shares (at $240 a share), Nice if you have 1/2 million dollars in your account
2) they have exceptionally tight spreads that is a lot better than IG
3) Their set up is very professional and get filled a lot quicker than perhaps we could, not sure

July 20, 2020

2 minutes ago, dmedin said:

Well, only thing I can suggest is try skimming the indices or FX instead.

thanks, I am trying to learn more about Range breakouts (backed by volume) but such short time frames (1min, 2min) seem a no go.

July 20, 2020

It seems to me that using SB is for the majority pointless for scalping stocks due to the wide spreads, I tried it several times and although I get the direction right (mostly), I barely make the spread back. With share dealing you have the advantage of a tighter spread but you have to factor

- £6 return ticket (UK)
- can only go long.
- 0.5% on buy side (UK exchanges)

The last one seem to put us back in the same position as the SB route. US exchanges have a 0.00207% and no fees (if >3 trades pm) so seems viable
Looking at a few past trades, it seems like its only the very opportune trades that can work with?

Anyone try it ?

July 19, 2020

for free? why would they?

Also you can never know if they are full of BS or not. I don't think I have ever seen anyone actually show verified trading statements

July 18, 2020

5 hours ago, dmedin said:

Stan Weinstein wrote a book on how to profit from trading stocks in the 80s, and guess what, nowadays he makes his money from hawking a newsletter to financial institutions. He'll probably retire a wage slave just like the rest of us

That famous candlestick guy - Nison - makes his cash from seminars and talks and selling training courses. This is a recurring theme

Yeah look I am, in under no illusion that this could be a total waste of time, in fact it more satisfying the curiosity I have had about this for years.

I think there are other fringe benefits to trading , such as starting to take note about general money management. For example I remortgage my property a month ago. I was paying an extra 1.5% for probably 8 year than I really needed to. Leaving cash just sitting in a current account for a decade and so on all has long term significant impacts on your wealth. I am approaching 50 and the best thing I ever did money wise was getting on the property ladder , No one really thinks about this or pension funds in your 20's (i didn't) , but the significant savings or changes in potential wealth can be huge all for a just a change in attitude . Even if you quit trading , just dumping some money into the S&P, FTSE and let it compound away for decades is well worth doing

But like the "trading experts", I am wise after the fact 😄

July 18, 2020

14 hours ago, 786Trader said:

Have you tried setting stops with a - 1%, -2%, -3% or even -5% swing. I concur that losses would be larger, but it also gives opportunity for swings to gain in your favour by similar margins. setting a stop with too much caution can create losses where it is not necessary. Bear in mind bots hoover up small price swings automatically and a very limited stop is bread and butter for said bots. Also you allow for giant trades which alter the price to be absorbed before popping stops.

I generally have a rule of thumb of a stop of 1 bollinger band with should in theory (well based of previous moves) cover 66% of [price moves for that time frame [BB just seems to be a 1 normal standard deviation of a specific window length], but then started to look at other 'accepted' trading strategies. For example as you mention, if your very confident with your trade perhaps a tight stop is advisable so you get several tried at it.It seems like a lot of people advocate it. On the other hand , the usual price volatility can knock you out quickly. I never considered automated trading bots, that's quite interesting! Thanks!

I find that since I started keeping detailed records , the mist is starting to SLOWLY clear. I guess many further down the line don't need this headache and have a natural feel for the markets. For me it's still a struggle to see where the bulk of the problem lies, the strategy the stops, or the market. and so on

I think what I might do is have 5 go to assets and just work with them. Gold seems to be a good one for me as when it starts to rise a moving a MA with retracement is a high probability strategy . I tried the same thing with banking stocks and it was unsuccessful, it could be the market conditions , no idea

My aim is to just limit the sheer amount of moving parts to a trade and focus on my hit rate for now. As I say I have no expectation of making money this year

15 hours ago, 786Trader said:

The price is just the price, it is what it is, placing subjective value on winning or losing is difficult to avoid but a philosophical attitude can get one through and keep one in the green. One's own emotions and panic are the real enemy.

yes this was a big issue for me initially but since I reduce the risk drastically, it much of a problem now

Another related point I didn't mention above is : you learn alot about yourself doing this game. For me the actual cash is not the primary driver, I never have been materialistic and If I could make modest returns in the long run I'd be happy. The real driver is being good at something as I can be pretty OCD on things. Whether that's a benefit or a hindrance I am not sure! Time will tell.

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