Personal Organisation

[Salty Gibbon]

I have spent many many months now learning how to trade and hopefully how not to.

I feel as though I have been on an incredible journey, learning all the way.

I now have my own personally developed system / methodology - I am very clear on the set-ups that I can successfully trade - I have worked successfully on the psychological aspect of trading and I have conquered the discipline side of it.

I use Nasdaq Level II and Time & Sales in my own special ( simple ) way and in conjunction with the price charts and the technical indicators that I employ, I feel confident that I can trade successfully.

However, there is one thing that I still have to master.

I maintain a watchlist of stocks and a couple of reserve lists. As the trading day progresses I flick through the charts of each of the stocks on my lists looking for my preferred set-ups. However, I invariably miss set ups and trades becuase I am not looking at the correct stock at the right time and this process of flicking through charts seems very hit and miss. I could start with Stock XYZ and seeing no set up as yet I will go through all the rest of my stocks. On returning to XYZ I often find that the set up has already come and gone and I have missed the trade.

Does anyone have any advice on how this situation could be improved. I have considered having fewer stocks on my watch lists but as you reduce the number of stocks then you reduce the potential number of trading opportunities.

I feel like this is the last piece of the puzzle for me and the sooner I get it in place the better.

Any advice is welcome.

 

[Racer]

I trade full time now and am a total addict! I watched the markets for years before doing very much.
Salty, I tried that, but now I watch about 100 or so stocks and wait for the support resistances areas on those. But I don't trade all those, just a few of them, and go long short depending on the day/chart. Much easier that way as you can get to know the share, what affects it, L2 etc

 

[Trader333]

SG,

How many stocks are you trying to monitor ?

What kind of setups are you looking for ? I am not asking what your strategy is but just an idea so that I can comment better.

What software are you using to do this monitoring ?

The more information you give the better I can comment or you can PM me if you wish.



Paul

 

[chump]

Salty,
I am behind you,but have been thinking about this same issue. My solution which may not be yours is to pare down the number of stocks that are approaching the setup and then anticipate where they will have to be to make the setup occur. Then set that price up on alert on the quote screen.
Hope thats of use.

Cheers

 

[TheBramble]

The perennial Scanner question.

SG - as oft-quoted (especially recently) on other threads, the need for a good scanner that can easily incorporate individual traders' watchlist criteria for their chosen instruments would be worth its weight in gold.

No packaged charting or trading package I have used addresses this issue to my satisfaction. Certainly seems to few others either.

It's almost unbelievable some commercial entity hasn't either (a) spotted this gap and (b) plugged it.

All the better if it were a freebie bestowed upon a grateful t2w community, but I suspect the effort required of such a beastie would preclude giving it away.

Still, I'd pay!!!

 

[Trader333]

Tony,

No packaged charting or trading package I have used addresses this issue to my satisfaction. Certainly seems to few others either.

The issue I believe is that such a package could put a huge strain on the supplying data providers servers and if you had a lot of people using it then it could grind the whole thing to a standstill. This presumes that the user would want to scan entire markets for particular setups and is based on the fact that one of our colleagues was doing this and got banned from using his scanner for the very reason I have just stated.

I guess that it is possible but would have to be done on an almost individual basis as anything that was commercially available could soon run into trouble.

It also depends on what your scanning requirements are because if they are quite simple then it may already be available from some sites.



Paul

 

[FTSE Beater]

Hi Salty

My personal answer to this is to use price based alerts. As I'm flicking through the charts, I'll set an alert for the price where things could get interesting. What software you use, will govern how fast it is to set alerts and whether or not it is a viable option for you

Maybe an indicator alert system could work. :idea:

 

[Salty Gibbon]

Thanks guys for the suggestions and I can see that it is a fairly common problem.

Paul, I do not really want to go into the set-ups as it would take all day but I monitor around 80 Nasdaq stocks. These are loaded into 4 different portfolios in QT. THe top 2 portfolios contain a total of 25 stocks and these are the ones that I really focus on. If I cannot find any set-ups by flicking through the charts, then I go to the other 2 portfolios. As I said previously, by the time I get back to the start I find that I have invariably missed some lovely trades and it is hair-pulling time.

I do all this manually as it would be impossible to get a scanner to do the work for me given the intricacies or peculiarities of my particular set-ups.

I will just have to work on it as best I can and hope that practice makes perfect.

 

[BBB]

Im kinda with FTSEB on this one. If I'd add anything to it though, I'd set the alert a few points away from the entry price. This way I can examine the set up a little better rather than just mechanically entering the market. Context is important to me.

 

[Salty Gibbon]

Context is important to me.

I couldn't agree more.

 

[Trader333]

SG,

If you monitor only 80 stocks then there are ways of being alerted that would enable you to not miss the opportunities you talk of. It would require a different software package but I am pretty certain that it can be done because I have previously done this myself.


Paul

 

[Salty Gibbon]

Paul, if I can go some way to solving my problem through using the software you speak of, it would be great.

Could you please elaborate on this ?

 

[bbmac]

Hi,

I trade forex, and only moniter the charts of 3 closely correlated pairings, although I watch the price of 6 (the other 3 acting as potential indicators to the other three.) I only ever have 2 open trades at once.

For me, I have found that this is the only way i can trade without getting too stressed and confused. (Don't know wether I'm a complete dimwit....but it worrks for me) Keep it simple.

If I were trading ftse100 stocks i would only trade the ftse trackers for instance.

hope this helps.

best

bbmac.

 

[Salty Gibbon]

Does anyone specialise in only a very few stocks ?

This might solve the problem of missing trades due to looking at too many stocks.

Is there any merit in just having a list of say 5 stocks and concentrating on these and these only ?

Of course they would all need to be good movers providing plenty of opportunities every day.

 

[Trader333]

I will send you a list of around 20 that usually give good moves on a daily basis. However as I dont know your approach I will be second guessing if they will provide appropriate signals for your own trading.


Paul

 

[Mr. Charts]

Salty,
I set up alerts in esignal on my core lists, but can scan through 40-60 stock charts at a glance for my set ups within two minutes including the time necessary to bring the charts up on screen.
I then await my actual triggers to execute the trade.
In everything you say you are on the right track ;-) IMHO of course.
Richard

 

[Mr. Charts]

Depending on your set -ups, you could dynamically whittle your list down to 5-10 and concentrate on those. Remember to expand that list dynamically however.
R