Tag Archives: Day Trading

Making A Living By Day Trading

The lure of day trading is pretty hard to ignore with the prospect of earning a living well into the six figures. For a day trader to be successful there are a number of factors that come into play with the major two being knowing when to buy and knowing when to sell. Through out this article we will look at a scenario starring Marty Forex and see how he makes a living by day trading

At the start of the business day, Marty Forex selects 100 shares of Forex-Trading Inc. He knows from watching the trends that Forex-Trading is about to make a big move upward, and he is right, the stock gains at least a point by noon of that day. As a day trader, Marty wants to walk away with profit by close of business, so he sells off this upward moving stock and splits up the profits from the sale. Part of his profits goes into his day trader account to make sure that he will meet his minimum equity; the other part goes back into investing. He has had his eye on another stock that is set to make a nice upswing as well. Marty is successful, because he is careful and because he knows how to read the stock signs.

If the amount of profit that Marty Forex makes for this trade is $100 (obviously an amount simply for this scenario) he would most likely use half as account cover capital, and half as re investment. Of course, no one in the day trading game is doing any investing with $50; again, this figure is simply for illustration. If he makes five similar trades for the business days, with equally similar results, he will have made $500 of profit. Keeping with that theme, trading five days a week would net Marty $2500 of profit per week. (Commissions, overhead costs and other business expenses, realistically bringing the amount down to $2000 or less would reduce this figure.) This is still a nice bit of profit, considering that this is only one stock’s trade performance. Marty Trader probably handles quite a few more trades than that in a day’s time.

Now unfortunately not every trade is going to result in a profit so lets look at a scenario where Marty Forex handles ten stock trades per day with the same $100 profit. We will say that Marty is successful on 30% of his trades so out of the ten trades Marty makes $300 profit. Same scenario for a typical week will see Marty bringing home around $1500 before expenses kick in. Hopefully with more education on determining what a stock is going to do next Marty can increase his success percentage which increases his profits.

Day trading is like any other profession where as the more education and knowledge that you have the better off you are going to be. In my opinion a person should treat Day trading like brain surgery where one mistake can cost you dearly. With the explosion of the internet age there are a ton of resources and materials out there that will increase the chances of success.

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Good Traders, Bad Traders (Part II)

Scalper is a workable profile for a small retail trader. However, you should be able to view the overall trend of the market to gauge whether you are trading with or against the prevailing trend. A scalper is also a seeker of short term profits of the level of 25-50 pips.

A scalper might use a 10 minute chart to follow the market, a 1 hour chart to determine the long term trend and the 5 minute chart to time the entries and exits for each trade.

However, sometimes you might not want to close the trade at the end of the day as the trade is in profit and you are expecting more profits if you continue with the trade overnight. There is a rollover cost if you rollover your trades overnight. Be sure if you want to day trade, you know your broker policy on rollovers and the rollover cost for you.

However, sometimes you might not want to close the trade at the end of the day as the trade is in profit and you are expecting more profits if you continue with the trade overnight. There is a rollover cost if you rollover your trades overnight. Be sure if you want to day trade, you know your broker policy on rollovers and the rollover cost for you. A Day trader is looking for larger profits something like 50-100 pips. A Day Trader might use a 15 minute chart to follow the market, a 4 hour chart to determine the long term trend and the 5 minute chart for making the entry and exit.

Position trading is long term like a few months to a year. A lot can happen in few months to a year. The whole world can go topsy turvy. The important question is can you make an investment for that long and survive looking at it for that long.

Each profile requires different scales of charts and time frames but also indicators and money management parameters. If you aim for a 1/3 risk/reward ratio, a Guerilla will risk 5-10 pips per trade, a scalper will risk 15-20 pips per trade, a day trader will risk 25-30 pips per trade and a position trader will risk 40-50 pips per trade.

Even if two trader s use the same charts and technical indicators they might interpret them differently. The differences in money management techniques and attitudes are much less. Good traders tend to share money management and attitude traits. So do bad traders.

Do you want to become a good trader or a bad trader? Always keep in mind that in forex trading a 10 pips move up or down can easily occur within seconds or minutes very quickly without any reason or rhyme. No two traders can be exactly alike.

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Trading Systems (Part I)

Using a mechanical trading system not only helps traders to make decisions and increase profits but it also provides great psychological comfort to the traders. At one point in your trading career that might come soon rather than later, you would want to switch over to a mechanical trading system.

You will also have to develop a systems approach to your trading. You will find most of the traders using a trading system approach to trading. You will realize the necessity of switching over to the system trade in order to lower the psychological pressure experienced when making every market transaction. Some of the traders may use a discrete trading system while others prefer a mechanical trading system. Trading without a system can be stressful.

The mechanical trading system set of rules may be translated into a computer program for automated trading. However, the mechanical trading system lacks fundamental analysis capacity.

The creator of such a mechanical trading system then becomes just another user of the trading system monitoring the computer generated signals. The trading system then generates trading signals that can be used by traders having access to the trading system.

Many traders over their trading careers develop their own trading systems. Besides the traders using their own trading systems, there are now many actively developed trading systems for sale as computer programs. These trading systems may be taken as grey and black boxes. Their prices might vary from a few hundred dollars to hundred of thousands of dollars.

One way is to develop these forex trading systems and use the trading signals generated by them in your trading. The most significant thing about these programs is that the traders should be able to accomplish transactions in accordance with the signals generated by the trading system. The other solution is to completely automate these forex trading systems. Sometimes theses trading systems are developed for big banks and corporations.

Majority of the successful individual traders use self developed mechanical trading systems. However, it is very difficult for a mechanical trading system to cope with different market conditions.

Change of market behavior leads to negative results from a previously effective trading system which obviously would require replacement. For example, many trading systems that are satisfactory in trending conditions become highly ineffective in nontrending environment. How do you deal with the challenge of changing market situations? This is the most serious challenge that automated forex trading has to solve. One way is to use a diversified forex trading system.

Many trading systems now depend on complex mathematical formula which is not understandable by the trader if the trader is not the author of the trading system. The most common disadvantage of these trading systems is the negative balance between he profitable and unprofitable trades.

What you need is a forex trading system that is profitable in the long term. In other words, it gives more winner than losers. Obviously the trading system can only be profitable in the long run if the ratio of the profitable trades is higher than the non-profitable trades. In other words the average profit of each profitable transaction is greater than the average loss of each unprofitable transaction.

Making correction in any mechanical trading system in the process of the trade is almost impossible. The trader must accurately and unconditionally follow the trading system without making any attempt to adjust it to the market conditions.

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Using LEAP Options

Great Britain was finding it difficult to stay within the tight exchange rate band set by the European Monetary Union (EMU) in the early’90s. One person who made history with options was George Soros who is famously known as the man who broke the Bank of England.

George Soros had this intuition that the Bank of England would be forced to devalue British Pound. So he bought call options on German Marks and put options on British Pound. He made a bet of $10 Billion by leveraging all the assets in his hedge fund.

Bank of England had made a number of public statements regarding its intention of staying within the EMU. However, within a few days of the speculative attack on the British Pound, Bank of England was brought to its knees as it was unable to sustain the immense selling pressure on the British Pound. Bank of England was forced to devalue British Pound in view of the speculative attack on the British Pound.

In a matter of a few days, George Soros made a cool $1 Billion profit on his bet. Can you make such a bet? Maybe not but this one example show the immense power options have if used correctly. Options are risky; there should be no doubt about it.

Options contract give you the right to buy or sell an underlying security like stocks, futures, commodities or currencies at a price before a certain date. This price is known as the Strike Price. This date is known as the Expiry Date. However, in European Style options you can only buy or sell on the expiry date not before that. Most people who trade options lose money, plain and simple.

You need to learn the Options Greeks. Time factor is very important when valuing an option. Further out the options contract is from expiration, you will have to pay a higher premium. As the options contract approaches the expiration date and if it is out of money, it loses its value very fast.

Have your heard about the LEAP options? LEAP stands for long term equity anticipation. It basically means that the option is much like the regular option except that the timeframe to expire is greater than 1 year. LEAP options are basically long term options. Leap options can help you profit over the long haul. You can use LEAP options in options strategies like the covered calls, straddles, spreads and so on.

LEAP options are risky because the option writer usually demands a hefty premium for taking on the long term risk. However, LEAP options can be incredibly profitable if used correctly. The buyer of the LEAP options has the right to exercise the option prior to expiration should the price of the underlying stock move in the money.

Far away from expiration, the higher the value of the options contract! Closer the out of money option is to expiration, faster its value drops. What this means is that the buyer of the options loses the premium that was paid for getting the right to buy or sell the underlying security. LEAP options can be a great trading vehicle for swing traders as they mitigate some of the time decay that is inherent in short term options. If you need to learn options trading than you should consider joining the Live Options Mastery Classes online at the Options University. Learn options trading from a former options floor trader for safer and better investing!

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Shorting Stocks

Most people know that you buy stocks and wait for a price appreciation to take place in order to make a capital gain. Can you make a capital gain when there is price depreciation in your stocks? Many beginning investors get confused when they realize that it is possible to make money when the stock falls in price. In practice, shorting a stock is as easy as buying stocks once you get hang of it. When the market is falling, investors sell short a stock with the goal of profiting from the fall in the price of that stock.

Short selling is confusing for new traders. It shouldn’t be. It is simple. The difference between the selling price and the buying price in case the price goes down is your profit. You borrow a stock from your broker and sell it with the intention of buying it back at a lower price in the near term future and returning it to your broker when you short a stock.

When the price of a stock goes down, you make profit. You are anticipating further fall in the price of the stock when you short a stock. However, if the price of the stock instead of going down starts to go up, you get a loss.

So shorting a stock without proper risk and money management is not wise. Theoretically a stock price can go up and up making your loss as big as infinity. However, before that happens most probably you will receive a margin call from your broker that leads to a forced sale before your losses reach unmanageable proportions.

Some people are against the strategy of shorting stocks. In the stock market crash of 2008, many financial companies went bankrupt due to the short selling of their shares by the speculators. A temporary ban was put on shorting for sometime during that period.

Swing trading is all about looking for making a quick profit by riding the trend in the market for a few days to a few weeks. In swing trading, we are simply looking to profit from the ups and downs of stock prices. When the price of a stock goes down, short selling is the best swing trading strategy. However, the goal of short selling is not to drive the price of a stock to zero and put the company out of business.

One reason why swing traders love short selling is due to the velocity of the moves! Negative news like poor earning, credit rating downgrade or a poor product launch can bring down a stock price in a matter of minutes and wipe out the steady gains made in months.

Short selling is an integral part of options writing. Short selling is also used in portfolio risk management. Shot selling can be a good hedging strategy for long term investors too. So if you a long term investor, you can lessen the impact of the sharp price drop on your portfolio by using a short selling hedging strategy. Swing traders always look for big winners and this brings them to the short side of the market. When the price of a stock starts to fall, chances are it will fall more before the market stabilizes and the price starts to rise again.

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