Wednesday, March 9, 2011

I'm a Hybrid Trader

In the day trading world, you typically have two groups of people - those who scalp many smaller moves throughout the day, and those who trade longer time frame moves, which may occur only once or twice a day. On an even longer term, you have swing traders who may have a position open for several days.

I prefer to combine all methods - initiating a trade when I believe there's a longer term move happening- preferably long enough to qualify for a swing trade. Once in the trade, I can then actively manage it by adding to or reducing my position as the stock does mini-reversals in the shorter time frames as it moves towards my longer term target price. So in a sense, I'm day-trading my swing trade. The benefit of trading this way is if I screw up on the day-trade part with a bad entry, there's a good chance I can be saved by the longer term trend which is moving in the same direction.

By day trading the swing trade, I can extract more profit rather than wait for the target to be reached while the stock is oscillating up and down. It also ensures profits are locked in throughout the main trade.

Trading Update with Bonus:

This will also appear in my xanga blog (http://soullfire.xanga.com/)

I covered my last position in Amazon in the morning, a bit too soon I might add - and re-shorted on rallies. It was trending up so shorting gains were reduced, but I was not yet willing to go long.

Closed my last position during after-hours as I think Amazon could still go lower, but it could also reverse and start heading back up strongly. Plan to day trade on the short side until the up trend is confirmed- then I'll go long.

After getting bruised by Walter Energy for several days during its run-up, today marks the first time adjusting my position in the stock was profitable per my average price in. Maintaining a position...

Now for the bonus - a snapshot of my trading log for the day:



Still trading smaller sizes while I work on fine tuning my trading/timing strategy as well as precision in entries and exits.




1 comment:

Jules said...

That's a lot of blue!!
Nice job! :-)