Day trading general

Anons, lets discuss daytrading. Everything from strategies to brokers.
Any tips for the new daytrader? Been daytrading for a couple of months and only recently i have been making profit daily.
What stocks/indexes are good to trade?

What apps/websites do you use? Also I've been wondering. This isn't really related to day trading, but is Acorn worth it? It's a mobile app that invests spare change from your purchases into a bunch of different companies automatically. But it costs 1$ dollar a month. How much would I need to invest to even recuperate the costs of using the app? Does anyone else use this?

ETX capital. Has a very nice setup and low spread, with many indicators. Apps (mobile) seem kinda shit since you cant have as many indicators and info (atleast the apps i have found)

This looks like CFD's, not stock.
Almost no burgers trade CFD's.

Do you guys who day trade go purely by the movements on the graphs and other apps you use?

Or do you use info about the companies too?

Looking to get into day trading myself, any advice or resources you guys can offer?

I use think or swim and love it. Sure you need to have a TD Ameritrade account to trade real money through it but if you're worried about the $10 transaction fee this kind of trading probably isn't for you. Basically the trick is that downtrends are overreactive and on average 75% of the lost value is recovered within 15 days of the bottom of the trend. My advice is to study a sample of 15-20 stocks and get familiar with their trends. Also, you need to monitor the price movements daily, especially for the companies you hold positions in. This is a great strategy for times of high volatility like the markets are experiencing now.

>Also, you need to monitor the price movements daily, especially for the companies you hold positions in

I consider it a huge fail if I have let two hours elapse without checking each position.

Simply don't understand people who aren't right on top of their investments.

I've Never consider day trading due to hearing you can't beat the system and all. Fees and taxes. What are you guys opinion on this and is it even "bad"?

I agree. I have a separate monitor dedicated just to trading and, as well as the mobile TDA app which is actually pretty great. Monitoring your positions during trading hours is crucial, and considering the proliferation of mobile stock apps, there's no excuse not to check on how your money is doing.

Another thing to know for anyone considering this strategy is that daily trading prices follow certain patterns, and will typically open and close at higher numbers than midday, so to maximize you will need to set lots of alerts and limit orders so that you can sell at the right price/time automatically. The percentage difference can be pretty big, +- .5/1.5% or more depending on how the market is doing on a given day.

I consider medium/long term trading harder because the longer you hold a position with a company the more you open yourself to risk and fluctuation. As long as you stay away from penny stocks, which can open at prices really far from the previous days closing price, your risk potential is actually relatively low. People tend to underestimate the liquidity of stock positions, and anytime your losses exceed your comfort level, you can sell right away cutting your losses. Of course, the more you monitor the less the risk, as you can sell before major equity loss, but stop limits help with this anyways. Technically what I do isn't exactly day trading since I rarely buy and sell the same stock in a single trading day, but I rarely hold a position for more than 15 days so relative to most stock trading what I do is pretty short-term.

What trading fees and taxes ? You use something offers free trading ?

I've been paper trading for about 8 months now. I'm itching to get going but I'm still gaining experience and making mistakes. Getting pretty good with options and their strategies and slowly starting to pay more attention to futures. Traded in some british pounds for a little profit this morning. My market awareness is just getting better and better over time and my maths is improving nicely too.

I just want to get to the stage where I'm doing the right things mechanically, just treating it all as a big numbers game and then smoothly move into doing it for real. Been dedicating a lot of time to it and I just want it to be second nature when I go live. Going to continue on like this at least until I've been doing it for a year.

How did you start paper trading? Been looking to do this myself but have no clue where to start so that I make sure I am learning as I do it.

>what I do isn't exactly day trading
Me neither, but I've accepted it.
Turns out when most people use the term, they're not talking about time frames at all, but rather where you work.

I just started with investopedia trading game. I have a couple of others I use as well. London stock exchange site has one and my actual real brokerage account has virtual portfolio stuff as well.

I've also used Think or Swim software papertrading and currently using Interactive Brokers software. I plan on testing as many different softwares and brokerages as I can to see which one suits me best and where I can get the best deals. I also use Dough.com and would have already signed up with them and think or swim if I could have but I'm in the UK. I'll mostly be trading US stuff though in the end as it really suits my day time frame and I'm so much more aware in that marketplace.

thank you, going to look into those

dont bother with stocks. also, youll need 25k$ if you do 4+ trades per week. stick with futures. 1 contract is $500 - $1500 day trading margin. you can make more with minis and gold.

you need $25k is you do 4+ daytrades per week, that being buying and selling the stock in the same day. If you hold it for more than one day the $25k requirement doesn't apply. The thing about futures that I don't like is the risk... lots of gains, lots of losses. With short term trading there really isn't much risk besides the opportunity cost of underperforming stocks.

how's my portfolio looking guys? 21 years old entering my last year in Uni as a math/econ major. Currently working right now as a bookkeeper for a large non-profit this summer. I got into paper trading because of my father's success in the stock market. He's a doctor so he earned a lot of capital to invest but recently he's been showing me his portfolios and his past successes and it was really eye opening. In some years he more than tripled his money and in almost all years had more than 20% returns. He really pushed me to begin reading about these things and practicing. He also specialized in cheap penny stocks which is where Im practicing mostly. Does anyone have tips/things they wish they knew earlier when it comes to investing in cheaper stocks?

Also, a great book that really helped me was Peter Lynch's "Beating the Street." Definitely recommend it to anyone starting out in investing.

forgot to add. I began this portfolio about a month ago.

That's pretty impressive, but I have two questions. first, why did you choose 200k as your starting funds for trading? unless your dad is going to give you that much to begin with your expectations on returns are going to be a bit skewed. Also, why did you only invest in 4 companies? With penny stocks I would try to diversify because the risk can be so high. I guess it worked out for you but I'd be nervous.

While we're playing this game, these are my percentages. I had to cut netflix and allergan because they were underperforming, although I didn't lose money on them. I closed all my positions before brexit (I was nervous) so all this is in the last 6 or 7 days. I've got another 5k waiting for a few companies I have an eye on to drop in price so I can buy.

I mean in the last 6 or 7 trading days

I choose 200k just because I wanted to have enough capital to fuck around with things. Im really only interested in the percentage changes, which are all that is going to matter when I actually begin investing on my own. Im also graduating Uni with 0 debt and have been in touch with a lot of companies so far that are offering beginning salaries of around 50-70K so hopefully by the time Im more firmly established the 200k won't be completely unrealistic and I will have some experience working with that amount of capital.

I also just sold Ford, Netflix, and Relm Wireless (lol dont even ask), so I had more to begin with, Im currently massing my capital to buy a huge position in ANW, which I think will surpass $9 a share.

Over the next couple of weeks im going to be focused solely on finding more good investments and adding to the portfolio. I feel that a comfortable portfolio for someone who does this part time doesn't need to have more than 6 or 7 stocks at any one time.

Another thing that I'd randomly like to point out about my portfolio and investing style is that I've noticed by lurking on this board that everyone here has some kind of huge suspicion of penny stocks which I've kind of been at odds with. In my opinion penny stocks can represent hugely valuable and well run companies that just operate on a smaller scale. The great thing about them is that they are easier to follow and understand and usually have so much room to double or triple in price. Another great thing is that people tend to pay no attention to them, so you aren't competing against wall street analysts who 90% of the time spew speculative bullshit but manage to influence the trading decisions of millions of people.

forgot to mention, I like some of your picks there. I only sold ford because I wanted to free up captial for investment ideas that I thought would be more worthwhile, but I definitely see ford having a 15-20% increase over the course of 6monthes - 1 year. Also a reliable dividend stock.

I suppose if you're consistently building on it 200k would not be completely out of question within a few years of starting point if you can add wage money and are getting good returns. Although I will say it feels different using real money than paper money, and i found myself taking less risks when I switched. Also you may be right about penny stocks. I don't really pay them enough attention, although I'm not sure they fit in well with my trading strategy since the discrepancy between one day's close and the next day's open can be so great that it leaves me little control.

I really like the freedom that short term trading gives you. Like with Caterpillar, I would never invest long but on the short term I don't care about their prospects.

For the record, I have my eye on Humana. Sure it's been plummeting after the merger problems, but once it bottoms out it has to climb. Humana isn't going anywhere, it's too big. Plus it's had multiple 10% dips in the past year and always recovered, so the case history has been pretty good.

Ill check it out, not home atm. I definitely agree with your logic though, markets are so emotional, especially during drops. Most drops (especially when they are connected to world events, not financial principles) are first and foremost emotional reactions. Very often they over correct and after a drop will return closer to their fundamental value. Check out EWU (its a UK ETF) the days following brexit I bought it at $14.00 and sold it two days later for $15.30. That trade that I made was basically following your logic with Humana, Its great to capitalize on people who are too emotional to be investing their money.

>the more you monitor the less the risk

what planet are u on

you guys need to look into options

Let's say I invest in company A. I think it can make 7% in the next 15 days, but the most loss I am willing to accept in that time is 3%. Let's say I invest 1.5k in that company. If I am monitoring it daily during trading hours, I will be able to sell if the losses approach 3%. That means that I can limit my losses at most to $45. I've used this strategy many times and it's a great way to limit losses. What is so hard to understand?

Instead of constant montoring why dont you set up a stop loss at the 3%?

I do sometimes, but there's a lot of nuance to it. Like if I own stock in a company, and it climbs 8% over 7 trading days, only to fall 3% in a single day on the 8th day, I have to make the decision whether it will recover and continue to climb or there is some underlying factor that is causing this or if markets are just having a bad day and the sector my stock is in took a hit in general. Things like that happen a lot, and actively tracking movements allows me to make more informed decisions on when to sell and buy.

Day trading is shit. Options are where its at.
I'd much prefer to take 40,000 dollars worth of CHK stock, and write covered calls at .27 every week for a weekly income of 2,500 than I would attempted to beat HFT.

what is a good app to use if i live in new zealand?

Godam dude
And the s&p500 is how you decide these things?

Ok so like say I just buy a stock and a minute later it goes down maybe 0.09 percent. Should I sell it straight away or wait a little longer?

damn son, tell me more. why CHK in particular? how far OTM do you sell the calls?

Well the index heat maps on think or swim help, but I also follow all the companies I am interested in on seeking alpha which is pretty great. I guess I just read a lot of financial news in general

How did you guys learn about trading ? I'm interested in it and found a book not too long ago..

Its stable, and not going into bankrupcy, and I'm long term bullish on it.
But it has weeklies that have have IV, giving you large premium. I sell the closest to the strike I can get, if I get called away, I just rinse and repeat.
It's maintained a 4-5 price range for literally like 4 months now with high IV. I couldn't ask for a better choice for trading premium.