How do you prepare for your intraday trading?

[akash123]

Even though every day trader has a different daily routine I would like to share mine with you.

I usually start my trading day at 8:30AM EST by tuning on to financial news and the world news. When you're day trading, you must be informed. I try to get a general overview of the news that is moving the market and whether there might be further news breaking shortly (i.e. Fed announcements, economic news). I read most of the news wrap-ups over the Internet, but also listen to financial TV.

However, I take the information I get there very cautiously. Just recently for example they announced a new bull market on TV and the market saw a few very strong days of sell-off after that. You have to be careful of this sort of thing in your day trading.

A very important part of my preparation for day trading is the technical analysis of the market itself, especially the NASDAQ. I will use indicators such as retracements, moving averages and trend lines for my analysis.

Most importantly though, as a day trader, I want to look at recent lows and highs. In fact if someone would wake me up 2 minutes before the open and ask me to make a quick analysis of the market ,I would only look at the prior day's high for upside resistance and the prior day's low for downside support.

I would most likely do very well just by doing that. All market analysis is based on the daily charts.

 

[Pferd]

I daytrade a mix of fx and indices using technical analysis.

Get to my desk between 6:30-7am.

Prior to the session:
complete physical/mental state review (today I failed, so am not allowed to trade - hence why I am writing a T2W post!!)
I listen to my squawk service and review overnight news.
I plot pivot levels, review support/resistance levels from 1h&4h on my charts.
Take note of Tier-1 news events for the day
review trend/sentiment on 15m & 1h for the few instruments that I trade.
Note strength/weakness across currencies

Normally I am ready to go sometime between 7:15 and 7:30.

Hi George,

I am curious about your "complete physical/mental state review". It is something I always wanted to do because I think will be very useful. Do you follow a certain technic or do you have some rules, etc?

Would you mind to share with us a bit more on that subject?


Thanks.

 

[superfly]

. All market analysis is based on the daily charts.

valuable perceptional nugget, eventhough not totally true. I for instance use 4 ticks.

 

[options-george]

Hi George,

I am curious about your "complete physical/mental state review". It is something I always wanted to do because I think will be very useful. Do you follow a certain technic or do you have some rules, etc?

Would you mind to share with us a bit more on that subject?


Thanks.

Hi Pferd. Sure, I am happy to share. It's basically a list of 5 questions that i ask myself and on each question I can score 0, 1 or 2 points. The question draw on my my physical well-being, sleep, diet, mental state, trading confidence, and recent profit/loss record.
If I score less than 6.5 then I am not allowed to trade that day.
I also keep a log of my scores over time.

I will put a copy of it on my blog when I get to the office tomorrow morning, and then you can see the list of questions. I will put a link to the blog post here.

George

 

[Pferd]

Hi Pferd. Sure, I am happy to share. It's basically a list of 5 questions that i ask myself and on each question I can score 0, 1 or 2 points. The question draw on my my physical well-being, sleep, diet, mental state, trading confidence, and recent profit/loss record.
If I score less than 6.5 then I am not allowed to trade that day.
I also keep a log of my scores over time.

I will put a copy of it on my blog when I get to the office tomorrow morning, and then you can see the list of questions. I will put a link to the blog post here.

George

Thank you very much George :clap:

 

[forker]

That's a very peculiar way to trade.

 

[options-george]

Thank you very much George :clap:

Good morning Pferd.

I put a screenshot of my pre-session assessment on my trading blog for you as an example. Click on the link here to see it.

 

[Pferd]

Good morning Pferd.

I put a screenshot of my pre-session assessment on my trading blog for you as an example. Click on the link here to see it.

very useful thanks again. Will have a go at developing something for myself along those lines.

 

[options-george]

very useful thanks again. Will have a go at developing something for myself along those lines.

Great, glad you find it interesting.

So one benefit you might reap from doing this, is that you will probably change your behavior in order to get more points the next day. In my case, I made a conscious effort to drink less alcohol, get more sleep and do sport on a regular basis. Additionally I made a conscious effort to believe in myself and developed techniques for increasing my self-confidence.

Thus for me it turned out not to only be a measuring tool, but also something to motivate to change my behavior in a good way.

Good luck with it.

 

[arigoldman]

valuable perceptional nugget, eventhough not totally true. I for instance use 4 ticks.

If you listen to an interview with, for example, Paul Tudor Jones, or turn on CNBC, they are all talking about market analysis based on Daily charts.

 

[AMAR1979]

Intraday Trading Strategy

Hi,
I use Daily Charts for Trend identification.Then use CCI or STOCHASTICS alongwith MACD on 15 min. chart to trade in the same direction.ORB trading strategy combined alongwith these gives excellent results, and it also works acc. to Steve Nison's Risk/Profit ratio..

 

[AMAR1979]

OR, identify the daily trend, and then wait for some Candlestick Pattern alongwith Trendline Break with volume increase