What is your Trading Style?

[Alchemist]

by the way, sov, what happened to yours?

[Leth]

-long term trend follower
-use options as my leverage tool on all three of my systems
-options expirations are never less than 6 months, 1 year leaps, or 2 year leaps
-price is my only indicator
-buy higher highs, sell lower lows
-trade for others as a non-professional

been trading for little over five years now. i do have a day job (self employed) which keeps me extremely busy, so i go over my positions and place my trades after the market closes.

[Soverus Khan]

I trade my retail account that has been built up over the years. This provide me the ability to leverage large blocks of highly volatile stocks to produce income. This money could be passively invested, use as venture capital, or used to buy a franchise. I choose to use it as an income generating base as I see the markets as the ultimate arena of brains, guts, discipline, and opportunity. From the profits come lifestyle and investing needs. This base was built first by swing trading (several systems) until I reached a level to intra-day trade with size.

The "value" of my time is of prime consideration. I would rather spend a "relatively" short trading day than 14 hours building a brick and mortar, chasing tennats, or schmoozing customers.

Investing for the long term is value based and consists of the large cap, dividend producing stocks with attention paid to sector cycles...I do not use forums for "investment" discussion.

I trade stocks. I trade about 5 -10 different stocks on a daily basis depending on the setup presented. I complete between 5 and 30 round trips a day and close all positions by the close.

I trade opening gaps on a few select stocks and then trade chart set-ups on the remaining "big boys" throughout the day.

I have used most of the indicators available. I have studied, built systems, tested, re-tested, backtested, forward-tested about 1000 approaches. I have found myself coming full circle in this education. That knowledge is absolutely invaluable in my current trading, but I do not use indicators as triggers or "picks". My screens are all statistics based (except for investments...different approach).

My trade setups are based on probablility, risk to reward, support and resistance (intra-day). Price and volume finally presented itself as the "lightbulb" to consistency. Simple, but painfully earned.

I trade 1 to 5 minute scalps or longer as the trade materializes. I "scale in" as the trade plays in the direction forecasted. I trade a large block on the initial buy and then smaller blocks as the trend continues and my profit "cushion" increases. Rigid "mental stops" are ruthlessly enforced. Again, another painful lesson with the cost of tuition. I DO NOT average into losing positions (won some, lost many).

Goals with current system is consistency and increased scalability. I trade smaller sizes when I experience an increased number of losing trades. Market changes....CHANGE WITH IT!

"Painting the picture". I use 1, 5, and 15 minute candle charts on the stocks I trade. I use S&P and NAZ Comp on the 5 and 15 minute charts for overall direction. Bloomberg as the intra-day news source.

A journal is a form of discipline that (for me) is the best data collection system I know of.

I have begun trading the ES on a sym and I will likely move to that instrument as my only trades during the day. Same setups, same approach. Tough to do in real time while trading my real acount, but patience (telling myself this over and over!).

I struggle with position and swing trades. I have been successful, but my methods and abilities show low probability and very low risk/reward in regards to time spent studying ( I have a life). Too much noise for me. I also realize I begin to lose mental discipline and have a hard time sleeping even with a low value swing.

Swinging a massive position for an intra-day scalp is less stressful than holding a small overnight swing for me!!!! Hats off to those who master it.

I know what works for me. I try to "pay it forward" when I can. I've made live calls on a couple different chats, but that is only when I have the time or the "cushion" to drop my focus and share some info.

Damn that was long winded!

Khan.

[Kingfisher]

I have been in the market since 1991. My first purchase year.

I am a working Joe so I can not trade as most here.

My style: Swing Trader, latest trades and taking chances due to market conditions APA, AZO and XOM.

I have been looking for a bottom on GS . I thought we had reached it at 173 and I was way off target as the market has shown. Still looking for an entry on this one.

[Soverus Khan]

Hello King!! Would love to see that AH-64D avatar!

[Mr. Blonde]

I like oil, like to pick one particular stock and watch it obsessively until I am intimately acquainted with it and scalp it accordingly. Obviously I like something with good intraday volatility, I'll play it up and down between s/r and when it quits working I'll toss it aside and pick something else that I've been eyeing. I like to end the day all cash, but sometimes make exceptions and sometimes I may throw some small change at a current "hot" speculative pick, if it works it's free money if it doesn't it's a reminder not to chase chat room stocks with any real money. The last one I remember participating in was ONT, I made a couple of bucks because I was impatient, turns out that was a good thing for once.

Still learning, not a pro by any stretch of the imagination, I consider patience to be the most valued lesson I've learned so far, bit it's constantly under development and evolution. I use forum chat rooms to divert my attention from waiting on a price level to come to me, and I like to see the retail level trader psychology vs the big money. I don't post in forums themselves as often as I used to, I'm more suited to reading and gleaning for now.

I look for correlations between the stock I'm trading and the S&P or the Nymex futures, or another stock in the same sector. This helps me determine if directional changes are a part of a broad based movement or specific to my particular stock for some reason.

I want to explore options but I'm in no hurry as I've only just returned from a lengthy absence and I want to make sure my methods are sound with stocks before getting into any other instruments.

I use Bloomberg tv mainly for breaking news and some interesting reports/interviews, but in general I try not to allow too much noise into my trading decisions. The opinions given seem to be on the order of black today and white tomorrow.

So, pretty boring really, I'm striving for emotionless trading; buy, sell, profit, spend, be a consumer

[Soverus Khan]

Welcome back to the oil pit Blonde. VLO offers a nice range intra-day. Of course the old stand-bys remain nice and volatile as well. XOM, COP, CVX, DIG, DUG, XLE

[Mr. Blonde]

Good to be back Khan, thanks. All good mentions to trade there, I've been using WNR the past few days and I'm looking into how I can use options to better scalp it.

[Soverus Khan]

Maybe a few new members would care to post???