I had stops trigger on a lot of stuff I had bought a month to a few months ago over the past couple of days. I just got out of FLS, ZINC, and BP over the past 2-3 days. I still have QQQQ, but if it dips a bit more, I'll get stopped out of that. I've still got MCD and KO.... woo hoo! I did buy some SDS the other day to balance out what I have left. I'm hoping for a pullback.
When a bankruptcy plan is approved/they come out of bankruptcy, the shares will be worth squat as far as I know.
Sepracor took a big hit today, down almost 20%. Analyst consider it a solid stock but they had some bad news yesterday. Seems like the drop is overdone, we'll see.
my NVTL and GE have been doing very poorly wondering if i should get out or wait it out... when do you guys think things will get better?
i'm holding GE long. i dont' need the cash anytime soon...and you have a hard time convincing me it's not on its way up eventually.
I really thought the economy would slowly get better and better. Seems like were hitting another slump right now.
Madmax, I am thinking the same for Alcoa. I think both companies may be good for holding long. Spec play though.
Some (many?) expected 2009 to be a <i>Lost</i> year from an economic standpoint. <i>Green Shoots</i>? It took several decades of excess to get to the current situation and it won't get resolved - washed through in under a year as was hoped - suggested by some. <hr> AA reports earnings this Wednesday after the Close. Earnings Reports this Week Early expectations are for a .34 loss. If you search by the stock symbol, you can get a window with a historical record.
Alcoa is interesting around earnings time. From what I recall, they almost always disappoint. Their last 3 earnings releases have been trainwrecks (with December being the definition of "miss"). But long term, who knows?
Anyone trade professionally? Who do you trade for? How have you been doing the past 2 months? Some of the more senior traders I talk to tell me its been some of the slowest months in years with this low volume/volatility. I started almost 2 years ago and needless to say this has been a crazy/spectacular/educational year. I wish I knew what I know now last August. I doubt something like that will happen again anytime soon, or ever. Any other traders feel like divulging some of your experiences? What kind of strategies are working for you nowadays? OPG? MOC? Pairs? I doubt anyone scalps anymore right?
1. Pattern Recognition 2. Plan your Trade and Trade your Plan 3. Have a fair idea of what you are buying. Not expecting you to know everything, but at least know the Market Cap, Average Shares traded daily, Industry Group, Leader or Laggard within their Peer Group, Beta, 52 Week High & Low and similar. 4. Determine the trade timeframe that works best for you 5. TICK and its importance 6. <b>Trade - Money Management Don't take losing as something personal. Holding on too long to Losers is a distraction and ties up your funds that could be placed on a winner. <i>Stuff happens</i>, so let it go and move on.</b> 7. There are approximately 20 something days a month that the Market is open. Certain events repeat during that monthly cycle such as various unemployment reports, oil inventory statistics, the OPEX week and so forth. Learn the calendars and make a notation of what happened before, during and immediately after that event. Calendars 8. There are also regular events each day such as the FTSE & DAX Closes, NY oil pits closing, NY lunch hour and so forth. Watch the clock and make notations of regular movements - quirks at certain times of the day. 9. Have a passing knowledge of TA. It isn't everything, but a general knowledge of it is very helpful. 10. <i>Gurus</i> There are some really sharp people out there, but also quite a few duds. Even if you find a <i>Guru</i> that is doing well, he will have a Loser from time to time. Try to understand the reasoning why you are buying something. Depending totally on a <i>Guru</i> isn't the best thing. He/she might die, become ill or just go into a <i>Slump</i> and then you are stranded because you failed to <i>Learn How to Fish for Yourself</i>.
I know people that scalp almost everyday. Depending on how the day is going: GS SDS UWM DIG BAC SPY JPM and so on. They will use something like Finviz and then proceed from there. One woman favors 80/20 Stochastics on either 5 minute, 3 minute or 1 minute charts depending on the stock. Nothing fancy, but she grinds it out on a fairly regular basis.
I'm a professional gold trader. Its tough work, but rewarding though. It took me nearly 10 years to become consistently profitable. Although some people master their niche in a much faster time frame, most people lose for a few years and give up. I started in equities when quite young, but moved on to commodities when I realized the equity game is quite often rigged against the individual investor. I trade based solely on price and volume. Mostly swing trades and writing option contracts. I know a few scalpers. These guys have nerves of steel, because it is the most emotionally exhausting type of trading I have seen. I don't think I could do that day in, day out for the rest of my life. I have alot, alot of respect for these guys. They also provide great liquidity in the markets, but recently have been blamed by the media for these short term price swings. I think the most important aspect I can impart is that trading and being successful isn't about the wins, but more about the losses and basically risk management. You have to understand the risk involved in every trade. You shouldn't go into any trade saying, "how much can I win?" But rather you should be focused on "how much can I lose?" In addition, learn the theory of "Max Pain." Its basically understand the market moves to areas where it causes the greatest amount of traders, the maximum amount of pain and then it moves back to the mean. That is why sometimes you feel right when you close a losing trade the markets/position move back into your favor.
the stock market isn't the economy. the "bad news" you're reading now about the economy is largely centered around lagging indicators.
In the past 2 years, most of the scalpers at my firm have either quit, or changed strategies. The reason is the NYSE's change to the hybrid system. Now I started there around last August, and this change occurred about 6 months prior to that. Therefore I have no first hand knowledge of how it used to work. However just from what I hear, they used to trade off the specialists' manipulation. Either stepping in front of a big buy order or below a big sell. This was easily identifiable back then without hybrid. And since the specialist actually paused trading of the stock before sending his orders, it gives you ample time to sidestep him. And if we are talking about before decimalization, these bursts could easily be for 1 point to multiple points. I know one head trader doing this who was green for 6 months straight. Every. Single. Day. Now that may seem unbelievable, but it was because back then scalping was actually a viable strategy, where as now it is wholly different. That brings us to today, where in a hybrid market, buyers and sellers can effectively hide their orders. Where a crowd on the NYSE floor only has to show 100 shares on your level 2 screen, even if they have another million behind that. Scalping has now become an archaic strategy, because it can no longer constitute as a true strategy. I would rather classify it as a skill. And skill based trading is some of the most difficult, grueling, and grinding professions out there. In effect you are playing a professional sport, like basketball, football, poker, or chess. But while the barrier of entry for the NBA, NFL are insurmountable for most, and even for poker your bank roll needs to be quite substantial to play pro(playing 1-2 is not against pros), but for scalping(or any skill based trading) it is actually quite low. So with easy access to the markets, in a zero sum game, your only edge is your skill. I would venture that less than 1% of the population can play basketball professionally. Same goes for baseball, poker or chess and all other professional sports. For physical sports the barrier is mostly your physical capacity. For poker, chess, trading and the like, it is your mental capacity. Therefore it is a reasonable assumption that 1% of traders are profitable. This is why people tell you to invest your money and not be a day trader. Because only the top percentile of traders make money, and that's hard, grinding money. While the alternative being throwing darts at a board and pray(invest). History is on your side though, as the markets have generally gone up, so it is much easier to make money investing. Of course until history is wrong and you lose everything. But that is a different topic. So nowadays scalping means buying/shorting through size. Following order flow. etc. The absolute best scalpers at my firm make around 200k a year. And that is the elite. It is grueling and an absolute grind year after year. This is insufficient reward for being a master at your craft, IMO. The stress is just not worth it. While scalping is one of the first things taught at the entry level here, it is to familiarize yourself with the markets. Few go on to make a living out of it. Either because they are unprofitable, or because of its nature. This is what I did my first 4 months, before either developing or acquiring actual strategies. Strategy based trading is entirely different from skill based trading. In general it is taking advantage of market imbalances, on a grander scale. You could say a form of arbitrage. The difficulty is in developing the strategy, costly backtesting etc. Once it is viable, the strategy is easily transferable. It can be taught instantaneously(although no one would ever do that), and can be replicated day after day. I would argue that skill based trading cannot be taught. Maybe the principles can be, but to actually make it work, to be profitable, takes months if not years of experience, loss, and self examination. There are advantages to this however. Strategies can stop working. Market imbalances can be filled. Once that happens, you must adapt, develop new strategies, or become extinct. Ever heard of the Turtle traders? I believe they had a strategy, based not in imbalance but in trend. It could be taught easily. And once the strategy stopped working, they went from millionaires to broke. The advantage of skill based trading is that this won't ever happened to you. As long as you can adjust to market conditions, once you've acquired a skill, you cannot lose it. It won't just stop working one day.
