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Hello Dick,
I guess I was making an assumption.
Sorry to hear about SLB. Thanks for some good advice on the trading.
What I have learned over the last month is that the average true range
(over 14 days) is very helpful for taking up a position. Be it long or
short. It keeps me from buying in too high or selling too low. Although
one can't stop huge moves on news. I guess they were waiting for you to
hit the shower. I can just hear the guy from Merrill Lynch. "Hey fellas
Dick's finally hit the showers, lets drop this like rock." They know who
I am too. LOL.
Five years or even six months from now I am sure I will be trading
differently than how I currently trade. Day trading isn't easy. I try to
use the "real-time" data feed to help with my entries more than anything
else. If I see an opportunity then I day trade it. Since I am a nervous
person, when it comes to investing, the RT. is more like a security
blanket.
I will have to say though I think a great deal of folks who made good
money in this bull market have some blinders on. Thinking this bull is
going to go up just one more time. I think this hurt folks as well.
Myself, I haven't made the good money so I started to short just at the
right time. Yes there is a great deal of volatility, but I think that
will be coming out of the market, except for your earnings shocks, with
in the next month or so. I am saying this based upon the question, "will
the momentum players go back to the tech sector"? I receive a daily
email from Daytraders on line. He has been a tech momentum player, and
he said today that they wouldn't make suggestions in the tech sector
until all the bad news came out of Asia. Granted he is only one person
but he has done a pretty good job of playing the momentum game even when
there was bad news in the air.
As you know I am piddling with YHOO. I am going to try to stay with this
one for several months if I can. I stayed with ONSL for a while then
left it around $19. It is now down around $13. Silly me.
I also saw the Sting. Good movie. Some one already has mentioned that
it's not the data vendors that do this. It is the news media. And they
already do this. Buy before news is released to the public. We should of
gone into journalism so we could be investors. No data feed expenses,
just pure inside information. :)
Well it's about 8:10 am. Better get set up for the day. Hit the bathroom
one more time.
Have a good day,
Harley
Dick wrote:
> Hi Harley,
>
> No, I'm not really a daytrader (anymore), but in troubled waters like
> we're
> sailing now, I just don't like the downside risk of long positions
> (which I
> personally prefer, sleep-wise, to short).
>
> In high volatility like this, just the normal trading range can cause
> me to
> get stopped out, but sometimes it's not just volatility. I was sitting
> here
> watching the breathtaking strength of the oil drillers a few weeks
> ago, and
> in the time it took me to take a shower and get the paper, SLB dropped
> a
> couple of points.......Since I had nothing but drillers in my
> portfolio at
> that time, (and since the rest of the market was dropping anyway) I
> sold
> first and asked questions later.
>
> That turned out to be about 30% ago.
>
> But this is why I only trade while I'm not needed at the shop these
> days.........If you're not watching real-time, you have to loosen your
> stops
> in a volatile market (to prevent whipsaw and premature sells due
> solely to
> "market noise"). This can lead to big losses.
>
> And if you CAN watch the intraday market, you should keep or tighten
> your
> stops to keep profits from turning into losses.
>
> But the worst thing you can do (in my opinion) is have real time and
> take a
> big loss while you watch it drop......this sets you up psychologically
> to
> dread trading, and guarantees you'll try to "wait till it's safe"
> which will
> put you into trades exactly at the top, and get you out exactly at the
>
> bottoms. Infuriatingly, the T/A you select will wind up supporting the
> fear
> you feel.
>
> I know I'm not telling you anything you don't already know, but you
> might
> want to consider not using real-time for the kind of trading you're
> doing.... It's too easy to overtrade and lose money, or undertrade and
> lose
> confidence, unless you're willing to set tight stops, take smaller
> profits
> quickly, and cut losses even quicker.
>
> Eventually, you'll probably come to the same conclusion that I
> have......It's better not to use these darn internet-based "real-time"
> quote
> services for trading.
>
> BTW, did you ever see the Robert Redford/Paul Newman movie, "The
> Sting"?.....you know, where they got the horse race results, but
> delayed
> them slightly to "front-run" the betting ? I just wonder how long
> it'll be,
> before this age-old scam is perpetrated on the thousands and thousands
> of
> new home-based "high tech" private investors like us.
>
> My opinion ? It's already started with our mandatory signed approval
> not to
> hold companies like PC Quote responsible for accuracy and timeliness
> of
> data.
> And subsequently recieving exactly what we signed for.
>
> Dick
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Harley Meyer <meyer@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: Dick <dick@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: metastock-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <metastock-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: Saturday, December 27, 1997 12:58 PM
> Subject: Re: PCQuote
>
> >Hello Dick,
> >
> >I'll try this again. After being almost done the computer crashed. Oh
>
> >well.
> >
> >With out making any assumptions, I am reading that your style of
> trading
> >is day trading. You are looking for some piece of information that is
>
> >going to move the market and you want to be on board when it starts
> and
> >out when the market/stock begins to lose the upward momentum. You are
>
> >looking for that 1 to 2 point scalp.
> >
> >I can now see why PCQuote is not for you and I want to thank you for
> >taking the time to letting us know why PCQuote is slow for you.
> Beings
> >that I have the same PCQuote although a different service I will
> agree
> >with you that PCQuote can't do what you wants it to do.
> >
> >To answer your question about selling or holding. I would wait until
> the
> >price moved 2 points below where I bought in at and then see if I
> could
> >get out of the mess without losing any money. LOL, of course. I would
>
> >sell.
> >
> >I will add though that I am surprised that the quotes are that far
> >behind on any given stock that you can't trade it. Now I don't follow
>
> >the most active stocks everyday to compare how PCQuote performs with
> >these. So I don't know if these stocks have problems with the data
> >getting back logged or not. As we both know happens on the "busy"
> days.
> >
> >I am still with YHOO and I am able to trade off the prices that come
> in
> >to PCQuote. But with out beating a dead horse I can understand the
> >uncertainty that you might have because the other information you
> need
> >is not timely.
> >
> >One thing that I had mentioned earlier was to create two ticker
> window.
> >One for just the trades and the other for the market makers. Even
> though
> >I constantly watch the charts to see where the price is going, I will
>
> >say that ticker window really gives a great deal of information
> because
> >you can watch the market facilitation. This can be some of the last
> >piece of info I will look at when I place a day trade. Of course
> looking
> >at where I am in the daily range helps too.
> >
> >I'll send you a copy of my PCQuote for windows page so you can see
> what
> >settings I use for the tickers. You can also see what I mean by
> almost
> >level II for free.
> >
> >Now that I understand your style of trading, let us know what you
> >eventually settle into for future references.
> >
> >Harley
> >
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