Advice on Day Trading
10 Steps to Professional Day Trading

Our Products | About Us | Daily Trading Log | Archive
Free Trading Videos | Blog | Trading Room  |FaceBook

Everyone trades a little differently. The internet abounds with advice on day trading. The trading method outlined below is MY personal approach to trading. This method has worked for me for the last 27 years, and has helped me to avoid big draw downs since the mid 1980's. My style of support and resistance trading has helped me to make a good living trading.

My advice on day trading takes some time to learn because it's based on tape reading and getting a "feel" for the market. This is *not* about a fast, easy formula to "get rich quick" while you sweat out every trade. Instead, this is about developing confidence and trading consistently without fear and without big draw downs. The advice on day trading below is for anyone wanting to learn day trading, or even those of you who have been day trading support and resistance, but are not seeing consistent profits.

Here is my 10 Step Approach to Learning My Style of Trading:

Advice on Day Trading: Rule #1 - Practice exiting trades at break-even, using a one-tick target, a two or three tick soft stop (mental stop) and a 1.5 point hard stop. Never *allow* the market hit your hard stop. Exit by moving your target toward your hard stop, not by moving your hard stop towards your target. With time, all of this must become a reflex. You won't always be able to keep your losses down to 2 ticks, but only on rare occasions should you find yourself letting the market hit your hard stop. ("Rarely" means only about once every 50-100 trades after you get the hang of it.)

Even though your entries won't be good enough in the beginning to make a profit trading these tight soft stops, your entries will gradually improve until you turn the corner and become profitable.

Learn exits and entries separately. Don't let the one influence the other.

Taking losses this way takes dedication and discipline, so stick with it. It's the key to confident trading. If you never take large losses (and rarely medium size ones), the fear of loss pretty much goes away, and your confidence grows. Especially after your entries improve enough to support a "scalping" type exit strategy.

Advice on Day Trading: Rule #2 - Every trade *in all market conditions* begins as a scalp. Let me clarify this: if you're in a choppy market and you're looking to get small gains, like a point or so, manage your initial hard and soft stops *exactly* the same way you would in a quick trend or any other type of market. That means keeping losses as close to 2 ticks as possible, taking lots of break even trades and exiting every time the market doesn't give you *instant gratification* (within a minute or so).

No matter what the market is doing, you must demand that it moves in your favor right after you enter, otherwise you get out as close to break even as possible. This means you'll be closing a lot of trades near break-even within the first minute. This is the foundation of learning to trade for consistent gains.

Advice on Day Trading: Rule #3 - Don't worry about the commissions on break-even trades. If you do, you'll hold on to losing positions, begging them to turn around for you. This is called *hoping.* In this business, this type of *hoping* is the kiss of death. Your money-making trades must move your way in the first minute or less. When trades don't act right in the first minute, most of them will hit your hard stops.

So don't get hung up on the fact that your broker loves you. Who cares if he/she makes a living?

Your concern is *limiting losses*. I care more about this than anything else in trading. (Well-timed entries make my tight soft stops possible, so they're almost as important as the exits.)

Advice on Day Trading: Rule #4 - Practice your entries until your timing is so good that you can *reasonably expect* the market to go your way immediately, before it goes more than 2 ticks against you. This is not easy at first, but if you stick with it, you'll get it.

Advice on Day Trading: Rule #5 - Practice fading the emotional extremes on your entries. (Fading means entering in the opposite direction of the market's last move.) When an extreme NYSE-Tick (often above 1000 or below -1000) occurs at the same time the market accelerates into a support or resistance area, look for a price stall or reversal and fade the move. Fade the emotion.

Advice on Day Trading: Rule #6 - Rarely, if ever, *chase* the market on your entries. Wait for a pullback to get onboard a trend.

I favor shorts over longs... I can get out of a short position quicker than I can get out of a long position. I don't know why. I like to say that I "see gravity better than helium." In the rare strong-trending markets where I may chase an entry, it's going to be a down trend, not an uptrend. I don't trust up trends enough to chase them. Maybe it's just a personal quirk and maybe not. I honestly don't know.

But it's interesting to note that most (not all) professional traders I've met are Bears and prefer short positions over longs. You should give it some thought and find out which direction works better for you. Are your losses bigger on shorts or longs? Specialize in one direction and trade the other direction only when things are looking real good.

Advice on Day Trading: Rule #7 - Never let a gain turn into a loss. This will mean getting out of most trades a little (or a lot) too soon. You just have to live with it. Swing for home runs (greed) will ruin your trading. There is no mechanical formula that I know of, (such as, "move your stop to break even after you get 3 ticks gain") that will work. You have to develop a feel for how the market is acting at the moment, and use your feel to reduce your target or advance your hard stop. This comes with experience.

Advice on Day Trading: Rule #8 - Develop a feel for the big picture movements of the market, not just the intraday action. Use the end-of-day market internals to analyze the market's mood and develop a daily bias.

Advice on Day Trading: Rule #9 - Practice does *not* make perfect. Only *perfect practice* makes perfect. I learned this in my younger years, pursuing a professional baseball career. Perfect practice will keep your losses smaller than your gains in the trading business.

There are a lot of things involved in perfect practice. When you get tired, or when the phone rings, or whatnot, *don't trade*. Always, *always* exit trades exactly the way I've outlined above on every trade in every market condition. Always *wait* for your pitch, the well-timed setup for entering. Don't practice sloppy entries just because you're bored. Only perfect practice will help you. Anything else just amounts to practicing bad habits.

Advice on Day Trading: Rule #10 - Get a mentor. I traded for 6 years before I learned to keep my losses small. My trading turned around immediately after I met my mentor and talked to him on the phone for one week. Is there any serious profession that you can learn without a mentor? Maybe there is, but I don't know of any. It's certainly not trading.

If you are looking for experienced, honest, professional, and consistently accurate advice on day trading, my RBI Trader's Updates are for you. I write a market newsletter each day, giving my "game plan" for the next trading day. I'm as specific as possible including Support and Resistance levels that I will be buying and selling against, which provides *you* with great trade set ups nearly everyday. SIGN UP NOW and start receiving your updates tonight for tomorrow's trading action.

If you'd like to follow my percentage of accuracy for FREE, sign up for our delayed version of the RBI Trader's Updates. Receive the same updates that our "Real Time" subscribers get, but not until the following day after the market closes.

Better yet, subscribe to my RBI Updates in “Real Time" … and see how my support and resistance levels and market analysis will help your trading - no matter what method you’re using.

There’s never been a better opportunity to turn the corner and become a consistent trader.

Disclaimer:
The financial markets are risky. Investing is risky. Past performance does not guarantee future performance. The foregoing has been prepared solely for informational purposes and is not a solicitation, or an offer to buy or sell any security. Opinions are based on historical research and data believed reliable, but there is no guarantee that future results will be profitable.

We are not advocating trading futures. The prices and contracts in the TradeStalker's RBI Updates specify a manner in which you could trade. We occasionally mention the SP500 and Nasdaq futures markets because it is extremely liquid and tends to lead the other markets. This is not an endorsement or recommendation of the SP500 and Nasdaq futures markets. The risk of loss in futures is substantial. You can lose more than your original investment. We are not Registered Investment Advisors or Commodity Trading Advisors.

TradeStalker.com P.O. Box 9783 Fort Wayne, IN 46899
Toll Free 1-866-438-3244 OR 1-260-750-2447