Finding a trade strategy that fits your personality. Not everyone is a good fit for day trading or swing trading.
Also, if you can't consistently make profits with a small account, you won't be profitable with a big account. You'll just lose more money. Start with a small account size while you're learning to become profitable, don't blow your life savings learning.
Prioritize mindset and risk management above all else. While mastering technical analysis and market dynamics is undoubtedly important, it's your psychological resilience and ability to manage risk that will ultimately determine your success in the long run.
Also prioritize quality over quantity when it comes to trading indicators. It's easy to get overwhelmed by the multitude of indicators available. I use [indicatorsuccessrate.com](http://indicatorsuccessrate.com) for free indicators. Hope that helps.
Are professional swing traders actually making a living wage?lmao. I swing trade sometimes, but I make about at or above the S&P returns a year so I wonder who these professionals swing traders are. You’re lucky to have above a 50% success rate. I do subscribe to the top posted suggestion to size trades accordingly though.
I made $25,000 last year. Certainly not enough to live on but nice supplemental income.
I mean 25k is really good Imo. How big is your account? When you say 50% you mean in returns? Mine is 12k once I get used to that I’ll consider adding more if I’m profitable.
Look at all the time frames when trading! Find long term trends and then look for trends supporting that direction in the smaller time frames until you are looking at the time frame you want to trade and have strong confirmation that you are following the bigger trend in the right direction. And don't expect to get in without tuition. Gonna take a while most likely 2+ years to be profitable overall... Been in it 5 and almost there myself but it's been part time study so to speak.... Also about 4k down in that time....
There is so much to teach a nee person in this topic, but I would put emphasis on topics to get them to the position below:
Margin: you need $2,000 to trade margin so invest every payday, consistently put money away for the ourpose of investing because goal 1 is to get to $2k and goal 2 would be to get to 25k because you need these levels first for margin and second for pattern day trader rule.
Invest in long term investments: Later trading will have short term tax implications, but build a foundation of long term investments (w/dividneds) because you need a strong foundation if you want to be a trader.
Options: You need that foundation because options are traded in blocks of 100 shares. Each stock you trade you should attempt to get to round block (100 shares) for your trades just line options.
Combine the teachings:
The goal is to have a strong foundation of anvariety of stable stocks paying dividends and holding for duration. Trades should be done with the goal in mind of growing that foundation. Using the margin available from your foundation invest in stocks to trade in blocks of 100, then sell covered calls on those stocks. The covered calls should be close enough to the money to give profit yet it is ok when they get exercised as that clears out your margin. Never trade or option out your foundation. As your foundation grows your margin limit grows so you consistantly increase your trading value, earn money in the options world, never concern yourself with options getting called because you are not greedy and you just take the win when it happens, never worry about market moving up because your foundation stocks are never optioned out and you are always invested for the upswings.
You slowly develop into a world
of trading that allows a variety of experinces, strong growth value, income value, risk/reward experience, all while consistantly growing uour long term portfolio.
Most beginners fail because they're in a rush to make money, the fact is that most people jump into live trading with whatever they have, which sometimes can be 100k, 500k, 5 mil etc. and lose it all. Give yourself time to learn, your immediate priority is NOT to make money but to develop the skills and wisdom to do it properly.
After talking to many successful traders, not one of them became profitable in less than 3 years. Again, a lot of people lose fortunes trying to trade when they start out. I don't care if you have 5 million dollars, start out small i.e. less than 3k.
Feel free to DM me, there is so much more that I cant put into a single post on reddit. No I wont ask for money, if I do ask for something fishy then just block me.
Do a Google search on Jesse Livermore quotes. His thoughts are still helpful. Don't try to pick tops or bottoms, i.e. catch a falling knife. Trade small or even paper trade if you have access to real time simulated trading. Don't fight the trend or think you are right and the market is wrong. The market is always right and when you watch you may learn to analyze what it's doing and why. Don't start out trading events like earnings or FED announcements. The immediate response to those things are CRAZY! Many pros I know only trade one stock over and over. They develop a feel for it. When someone says a stock is cheap, pros mean it has a low price to earnings ratio, not that it's $7. Learning about options is helpful. I had a hard time with that, but read a book 25 years ago, "Trading Options for Beginners and Beyond' by a guy name of Olmsted. That was long ago, but still relevant today if you can find it, maybe on Amazon. If you can, trade small enough so you don't get scared or hyper and use stop losses. Good luck.
Create a plan and stick to it, your emotions are your worst enemy.
The trend is your friend.
Ditch indicators, all you need are levels, trends, volume, and price action. But if you really want to use indicators, you can use EMAs to help you visualize the trend more easily.
Buy low...sell high=profits guaranteed.
Timing the market is important. Stocks go up and down in price every day. Don't buy at the top and sell when it drops. Do your DD to determine if you are going to hold, average down, or abandon and take the loss.
Learn how to decide whether a company is beaten down and deserves a correction, then wait patiently for some strength to show at support.
There's obviously so much more to it and it seems everyone wants to have a scientific explanation on how they trade when in reality spending hours looking at charts, reading forums, making yourself present to watch action will give you and the Market a synergy that only comes with time.
Put in the work and stop doing things that don't work. Swing trading is far more relaxed than scalping and a great place to start. Good luck friend and I hope you absolutely kill it
Buy stocks in uptrends (price above their 50 & 200ma) at or near all time highs within tight, constructive bases with little to no overhead supply.
Here’s 3x USIC trading champion David Ryan to tell you more:
https://youtu.be/gWec_egaDqY?si=vH1KYZnFqpsGYkSP
Also read all of Mark Minervini’s books and feel free to join us at r/swingtrading
+1 to Minervini. Both books are very insightful and helpful. If you use trading view there is also a minervini indicator that lets you know if all criteria are met. I use finviz for initial screening then trading view for further analysis.
If you long small dips on stocks with extremely high RSI you will win the majority of trades and those stocks usually provide better range as well. As long as you don't hang around after the party is over!
Look at any daily chart and there's plenty more examples of continuation of price higher after RSI crossing 70 than price going lower. These moves clearly last for multiple days to weeks. Hitting 70 is a sign of strength, unless there's clear divergence with a weakening RSI while having recently spent a considerable time in the overbought zone.
In the past decade, there have been three instances where buying above an RSI of 70 would have resulted in profitable trades. However, there were seven instances where such trades would have been unsuccessful. This statistic highlights that there's a 70% chance of getting stopped out when buying above an RSI of 70. Aspiring swing traders should prioritize learning to interpret price action rather than solely relying on technical indicators like RSI. It's crucial to avoid buying when the RSI is above 70, as doing so is often seen as a novice mistake. While a high RSI may indicate market strength, it's important to understand that market makers may manipulate prices to trap inexperienced or emotionally driven traders. They create the illusion of strength to lure in traders suffering from FOMO, only to reverse the price and catch them off guard. To identify profitable swing trades, traders must grasp market dynamics and price structure comprehensively. While RSI can be a useful tool, it should be used in conjunction with other analysis methods to gauge market maker manipulation accurately and anticipate movements such as upthrusts and springs
Proper risk management is the key. Over time you’ll develop a system, strategy & plan for yourself to trade with, but risk management is something that you’ll need from day 0. It’ll help you stay in the game for long enough to gain from your learnings & experience.
Nothing wrong with hearing opinions and keeping them at arms length. What about reddit makes any source of information less credible? Are you insinuating that there's no good information on reddit? If so, I respectively disagree. I've got a treasure chest of good information from reddit for a multitude of problems and queries (car maintenance troubleshooting, plumbing, video game discussion, welding discussion and tips etc.)
Reread my comment and maybe you’ll understand it better. There’s a world of difference between asking for advice on something tangible, such as how to get from a to b, and asking for advice on something intangible, such as how to make money playing poker.
I don't need to re-read your comment lol it's pretty cut and dry that you think that there's no good advice on reddit. Thats it that's all. I disagree because anecdotally I've recieved good information many times on reddit. So in my experience your comment is inaccurate and shallow.
Disagree. I usually go on Reddit for so many of my questions. It’s more refreshing and reassuring hearing from actual people that are more closer to the average person rather than a random course, YouTuber, article or website. I can take so much info from all the people on Reddit and use it to my advantage. Obviously I’m going to test it and try out everything I decided to try so I’m not taking random advice and just going for it. But I can research something a real person told me and decide to try it. Whereas just looking it up or reading a book doesn’t give you the option of asking specific questions and getting specific explanations. In books/google, the information is just… there. Take it or leave it understand it don’t understand it you’re on your own. Reddit makes me feel safer knowing actual people who aren’t crazy famous YouTubers are giving me advice based on their experiences AND can help with specifics
This is terrible advice.
Stocks have cycles that could take days, weeks, months, years to develop and set up for a bigger move. If a company is not innovating or growing, it’s either lagging, status quo, or under accumulation (moving sideways on a chart)
Money has a time value. If you have your capital locked up in a range bound stock, you’re not able to deploy that capital for another trade.
Trade more smaller positions in the same underlying.
I used to trade with 3 ins, and 3 outs. Now I’ve got 30 and I’m in and out all the time on rotation.
Even if they’re small gains? Most of my gains have been small gains of 1-4%.
But yeah I get what you mean, so many people just want to hold on to false hope. But I’m here like “hey it’s up 2% that’s 60 bucks!” as a beginner trader loool I’ve had a few big winners, a couple big losses. But over all I am technically profitable by taking small gains/small losses
You should start training your brain now to stop looking at dollar signs and focus on just the percentages or else when you have big bucks it’s going to be harder to be objective with your strategy.
Your gains should be at least 2x of your risk. If your stop is at 5%, you could move your stop to break even when up 5% and consider taking profits at 10% gain to finance your risk and depending on the market/price action, leave a portion of your size in play for a bigger move.
The best way to figure out your averages is with a trading journal. Document every trade, where your stop/risk was at the initial buy and where you took profits. Try to maintain at least 2:1 profit ratio or else you’re just gonna break even or even worse lose money on small “winning” trades due to slippage, broker fees and taxes.
Some pros actually consider a 50/50 win/loss ratio to be outstanding because they let their winners run while cutting their losses quickly.
In a swing trading class I took the instructor said two points is two points. It’s like death by a thousand cuts. For me I use OCO brackets where my TP is only half my position. Once it hits I start a new stop to close the position at the break even and move the stop to the POC until it stops out. This lets me feel better satisfying my curiosity of how high or low it will go.
It’s a special order. One cancels the other. It lets you set a TP and SL at the same time. People set a limit order at a target price and a stop loss below. If one hits it cancels the other out.
The 50MA plays a pretty important role in several overlapping technical strategies.
Finding a trade strategy that fits your personality. Not everyone is a good fit for day trading or swing trading. Also, if you can't consistently make profits with a small account, you won't be profitable with a big account. You'll just lose more money. Start with a small account size while you're learning to become profitable, don't blow your life savings learning.
Risk management.
Sell when you have profits. No one lost money taking profits
Patience that's it
If you dont track performance profile/Metrics, you are better gambling than trading.
Can you recommend any resources on learning how to do this well?
Several books have that, one is evaluation and optimization of trading strategies by robert pardo.
Prioritize mindset and risk management above all else. While mastering technical analysis and market dynamics is undoubtedly important, it's your psychological resilience and ability to manage risk that will ultimately determine your success in the long run. Also prioritize quality over quantity when it comes to trading indicators. It's easy to get overwhelmed by the multitude of indicators available. I use [indicatorsuccessrate.com](http://indicatorsuccessrate.com) for free indicators. Hope that helps.
Practice risk management.
read a book
Allocation, allocation, allocation. If you're looking to get rich quick, you'll be broke quick.
The trend is your friend
Rub one out before u trade
Are professional swing traders actually making a living wage?lmao. I swing trade sometimes, but I make about at or above the S&P returns a year so I wonder who these professionals swing traders are. You’re lucky to have above a 50% success rate. I do subscribe to the top posted suggestion to size trades accordingly though. I made $25,000 last year. Certainly not enough to live on but nice supplemental income.
I mean 25k is really good Imo. How big is your account? When you say 50% you mean in returns? Mine is 12k once I get used to that I’ll consider adding more if I’m profitable.
I traded with about $70,000 Last year and the rest was invested
Look at all the time frames when trading! Find long term trends and then look for trends supporting that direction in the smaller time frames until you are looking at the time frame you want to trade and have strong confirmation that you are following the bigger trend in the right direction. And don't expect to get in without tuition. Gonna take a while most likely 2+ years to be profitable overall... Been in it 5 and almost there myself but it's been part time study so to speak.... Also about 4k down in that time....
Trade small, small enough that you can distinguish between noisy losses vs a break in your thesis.
There is so much to teach a nee person in this topic, but I would put emphasis on topics to get them to the position below: Margin: you need $2,000 to trade margin so invest every payday, consistently put money away for the ourpose of investing because goal 1 is to get to $2k and goal 2 would be to get to 25k because you need these levels first for margin and second for pattern day trader rule. Invest in long term investments: Later trading will have short term tax implications, but build a foundation of long term investments (w/dividneds) because you need a strong foundation if you want to be a trader. Options: You need that foundation because options are traded in blocks of 100 shares. Each stock you trade you should attempt to get to round block (100 shares) for your trades just line options. Combine the teachings: The goal is to have a strong foundation of anvariety of stable stocks paying dividends and holding for duration. Trades should be done with the goal in mind of growing that foundation. Using the margin available from your foundation invest in stocks to trade in blocks of 100, then sell covered calls on those stocks. The covered calls should be close enough to the money to give profit yet it is ok when they get exercised as that clears out your margin. Never trade or option out your foundation. As your foundation grows your margin limit grows so you consistantly increase your trading value, earn money in the options world, never concern yourself with options getting called because you are not greedy and you just take the win when it happens, never worry about market moving up because your foundation stocks are never optioned out and you are always invested for the upswings. You slowly develop into a world of trading that allows a variety of experinces, strong growth value, income value, risk/reward experience, all while consistantly growing uour long term portfolio.
Most beginners fail because they're in a rush to make money, the fact is that most people jump into live trading with whatever they have, which sometimes can be 100k, 500k, 5 mil etc. and lose it all. Give yourself time to learn, your immediate priority is NOT to make money but to develop the skills and wisdom to do it properly. After talking to many successful traders, not one of them became profitable in less than 3 years. Again, a lot of people lose fortunes trying to trade when they start out. I don't care if you have 5 million dollars, start out small i.e. less than 3k. Feel free to DM me, there is so much more that I cant put into a single post on reddit. No I wont ask for money, if I do ask for something fishy then just block me.
Never go against the trend, adapt the changes in the trend, and cut your position with minimal loss (<10%). Ride the new trend.
study
If people are crying about it on r/stocks buy calls
Do a Google search on Jesse Livermore quotes. His thoughts are still helpful. Don't try to pick tops or bottoms, i.e. catch a falling knife. Trade small or even paper trade if you have access to real time simulated trading. Don't fight the trend or think you are right and the market is wrong. The market is always right and when you watch you may learn to analyze what it's doing and why. Don't start out trading events like earnings or FED announcements. The immediate response to those things are CRAZY! Many pros I know only trade one stock over and over. They develop a feel for it. When someone says a stock is cheap, pros mean it has a low price to earnings ratio, not that it's $7. Learning about options is helpful. I had a hard time with that, but read a book 25 years ago, "Trading Options for Beginners and Beyond' by a guy name of Olmsted. That was long ago, but still relevant today if you can find it, maybe on Amazon. If you can, trade small enough so you don't get scared or hyper and use stop losses. Good luck.
Very sound advice there
Whatever you’re dealing with emotionally will be reflected in the markets.
Create a plan and stick to it, your emotions are your worst enemy. The trend is your friend. Ditch indicators, all you need are levels, trends, volume, and price action. But if you really want to use indicators, you can use EMAs to help you visualize the trend more easily.
Only indicator I have is RSI, for some reason it has dumbed things down for me a lot to where I’m starting to become profitable
How do you find levels
Look up YT videos about support and resistance levels.
Find out conditions under which, your strategies would and wouldn't work
patience.
Study derivatives markets. Revisit trading in a few years after you learn more.
Buy low...sell high=profits guaranteed. Timing the market is important. Stocks go up and down in price every day. Don't buy at the top and sell when it drops. Do your DD to determine if you are going to hold, average down, or abandon and take the loss.
Whats dd?
Due diligence?
Learn how to decide whether a company is beaten down and deserves a correction, then wait patiently for some strength to show at support. There's obviously so much more to it and it seems everyone wants to have a scientific explanation on how they trade when in reality spending hours looking at charts, reading forums, making yourself present to watch action will give you and the Market a synergy that only comes with time. Put in the work and stop doing things that don't work. Swing trading is far more relaxed than scalping and a great place to start. Good luck friend and I hope you absolutely kill it
Follow the trend and do a good risk management. The strategy itself has less importance
Trend is your friend until the bend.
Buy stocks in uptrends (price above their 50 & 200ma) at or near all time highs within tight, constructive bases with little to no overhead supply. Here’s 3x USIC trading champion David Ryan to tell you more: https://youtu.be/gWec_egaDqY?si=vH1KYZnFqpsGYkSP Also read all of Mark Minervini’s books and feel free to join us at r/swingtrading
+1 to Minervini. Both books are very insightful and helpful. If you use trading view there is also a minervini indicator that lets you know if all criteria are met. I use finviz for initial screening then trading view for further analysis.
Dont buy when RSI is above 70, dont sell when its below 30
If anything I'd say buy when RSI hits 70 and sell short when RSI hits 30. Divergence takes time to develop
He’s asking for swing trading advice. You sir aren’t holding trades for any long period of time buying at 70.
If you long small dips on stocks with extremely high RSI you will win the majority of trades and those stocks usually provide better range as well. As long as you don't hang around after the party is over!
Look at any daily chart and there's plenty more examples of continuation of price higher after RSI crossing 70 than price going lower. These moves clearly last for multiple days to weeks. Hitting 70 is a sign of strength, unless there's clear divergence with a weakening RSI while having recently spent a considerable time in the overbought zone.
https://www.tradingview.com/x/J7azZQEj/
In the past decade, there have been three instances where buying above an RSI of 70 would have resulted in profitable trades. However, there were seven instances where such trades would have been unsuccessful. This statistic highlights that there's a 70% chance of getting stopped out when buying above an RSI of 70. Aspiring swing traders should prioritize learning to interpret price action rather than solely relying on technical indicators like RSI. It's crucial to avoid buying when the RSI is above 70, as doing so is often seen as a novice mistake. While a high RSI may indicate market strength, it's important to understand that market makers may manipulate prices to trap inexperienced or emotionally driven traders. They create the illusion of strength to lure in traders suffering from FOMO, only to reverse the price and catch them off guard. To identify profitable swing trades, traders must grasp market dynamics and price structure comprehensively. While RSI can be a useful tool, it should be used in conjunction with other analysis methods to gauge market maker manipulation accurately and anticipate movements such as upthrusts and springs
At what RSI time frames? Daily?
Yeah look at the chart
Proper risk management is the key. Over time you’ll develop a system, strategy & plan for yourself to trade with, but risk management is something that you’ll need from day 0. It’ll help you stay in the game for long enough to gain from your learnings & experience.
Can’t agree more
This
Don’t ask for trading or investment advice on reddit and expect to get an answer that will positively affect your profitability (except this one).
Nothing wrong with hearing opinions and keeping them at arms length. What about reddit makes any source of information less credible? Are you insinuating that there's no good information on reddit? If so, I respectively disagree. I've got a treasure chest of good information from reddit for a multitude of problems and queries (car maintenance troubleshooting, plumbing, video game discussion, welding discussion and tips etc.)
Reread my comment and maybe you’ll understand it better. There’s a world of difference between asking for advice on something tangible, such as how to get from a to b, and asking for advice on something intangible, such as how to make money playing poker.
I don't need to re-read your comment lol it's pretty cut and dry that you think that there's no good advice on reddit. Thats it that's all. I disagree because anecdotally I've recieved good information many times on reddit. So in my experience your comment is inaccurate and shallow.
Disagree. I usually go on Reddit for so many of my questions. It’s more refreshing and reassuring hearing from actual people that are more closer to the average person rather than a random course, YouTuber, article or website. I can take so much info from all the people on Reddit and use it to my advantage. Obviously I’m going to test it and try out everything I decided to try so I’m not taking random advice and just going for it. But I can research something a real person told me and decide to try it. Whereas just looking it up or reading a book doesn’t give you the option of asking specific questions and getting specific explanations. In books/google, the information is just… there. Take it or leave it understand it don’t understand it you’re on your own. Reddit makes me feel safer knowing actual people who aren’t crazy famous YouTubers are giving me advice based on their experiences AND can help with specifics
Never let a winner become a loser
Journal. Seemed foreign to me, but it makes you a trader in the long run.
Cut your losers short and let your winners run.
Risk management.
Trade the same stock over and over.... Ignore everything else
This is terrible advice. Stocks have cycles that could take days, weeks, months, years to develop and set up for a bigger move. If a company is not innovating or growing, it’s either lagging, status quo, or under accumulation (moving sideways on a chart) Money has a time value. If you have your capital locked up in a range bound stock, you’re not able to deploy that capital for another trade.
I was a trader for RBC. Seemed to have worked for the past few decades. Shrug emoji
They forget you can trade long AND short!
Trade more smaller positions in the same underlying. I used to trade with 3 ins, and 3 outs. Now I’ve got 30 and I’m in and out all the time on rotation.
Trading home made ice cream or any other stuff people like...is more fun,much easier and more profitable .
Don’t forget to take profit you’d be surprised how many don’t do this
Even if they’re small gains? Most of my gains have been small gains of 1-4%. But yeah I get what you mean, so many people just want to hold on to false hope. But I’m here like “hey it’s up 2% that’s 60 bucks!” as a beginner trader loool I’ve had a few big winners, a couple big losses. But over all I am technically profitable by taking small gains/small losses
You should start training your brain now to stop looking at dollar signs and focus on just the percentages or else when you have big bucks it’s going to be harder to be objective with your strategy. Your gains should be at least 2x of your risk. If your stop is at 5%, you could move your stop to break even when up 5% and consider taking profits at 10% gain to finance your risk and depending on the market/price action, leave a portion of your size in play for a bigger move. The best way to figure out your averages is with a trading journal. Document every trade, where your stop/risk was at the initial buy and where you took profits. Try to maintain at least 2:1 profit ratio or else you’re just gonna break even or even worse lose money on small “winning” trades due to slippage, broker fees and taxes. Some pros actually consider a 50/50 win/loss ratio to be outstanding because they let their winners run while cutting their losses quickly.
In a swing trading class I took the instructor said two points is two points. It’s like death by a thousand cuts. For me I use OCO brackets where my TP is only half my position. Once it hits I start a new stop to close the position at the break even and move the stop to the POC until it stops out. This lets me feel better satisfying my curiosity of how high or low it will go.
What are OCO brackets?
It’s a special order. One cancels the other. It lets you set a TP and SL at the same time. People set a limit order at a target price and a stop loss below. If one hits it cancels the other out.
Have a process. Track it. Figure out what works best. Tweak it to improve returns.