In this thread, I'll share occasional tips and strategies I've found useful - I hope they'll help you sharpen your trading skills, too.

To see how what I've taught has helped other traders, go to:

http://www.StockTradingSuccess.com/SuccessCenter.htm
for over 101 actual trader 'success stories', including specifics.

Today's tips:

+ good trades feel right from the start, and it's always a case of "slow to enter, fast to exit"... which most traders have backwards.

If for example I'm looking to buy a breakout in AAPL at 9:57am, I may watch the time and sales (tape reading) patterns in it for up to 20 minutes before pulling the trigger... then I glance at the trin, the nas composite, the software sector chart, then decide on position sizing.

Once in, I'll let it work for several minutes -- if it goes against me by .3-.4, I'm out. If it runs in my favor .4-.6, I stay in a bit longer... if it continues on, say to .8 to 1.1, I'll close out half, say 8 minutes into the trade, then let the other half ride, with a .3 trailing stop (managed manually, watching the tape, with finger on the trigger/mouse button, to exit fast)... once it starts to consolidate/go nowhere, stall out or pivot against me, I close the rest of the position.

That's my mindset, from actual trading ... make sense?

-Ken Calhoun

I just wanted to say I learnt a lot of valuable stuff from Ken. I might of tweaked some of it to fit my style and my risk tolerance, but the major of it, it works just fine for me. I haven't been back here for six months or so and the reason is trading is going good. The stuff I have learnt is just repeated every day, every trade. Like a baseball player not every time up are you going to get a hit. The key is one to keep your loses small and second pick only the sweet trades. No trade is better than a losing trade.

Lastly with out a well written out trading plan, you are not going to make it. The plan takes all the emotion out of trading. The hard part is having the last two trades go red and the plan calls for you to take the next trade, which is just the same as the last two losers. Shooting 60% on my trades, means getting 4 out 10 wrong, still making big money. Plan the trade, trade the plan.

Thanks Ken for making my life a little better!

Thanks, Cash - glad to be of help. This is certainly tough, key is all the pattern recognition and money mgmt strategies. Agree re trading plan, makes a big difference.

__________________
Good trading,

Ken Calhoun, Pres.
http://www.ADXMastery.com New Release on DVD
http://www.TradeMastery.com
http://www.ChartScans.com (daily alerts)
http://www.DaytradingUniversity.com
http://www.DaytradingAffiliates.com
http://www.TradingAffiliates.com
http://www.TradingTelevision.com
http://www.StockTradingSuccess.com (w/Steve Nison)

p.s. per sec/cftc/ftc regs, none of this is to be construed as trading recommendations, it's just for educational use only, so you can
"peek over my shoulder" to see what I'm doing with some of my trades. See www.daytradingu.com/disclaim.htm for full disclaimer.
These pages contain excerpts of actual trades I've made; it's not a complete record of every single trade I make. Some days I'll take trading wins or losses that I do not take the time to screencap and post online; it's a partial record of some of my trades. Note that I am not making income nor profitability claims of any kind. Most traders lose regardless of what they do. The majority of my personal income comes from my training business, and though I'm a net profitable (small-share, under 5k shares per trade) trader, I make more income from my business training traders than I do in trading profits. I try to capture the best highlights of successful days so you can see practical examples of what I'm trading. There are also days in which I incur losses which are not shown. This is simply a partial record showing highlights of some of my successful trading days. No representation is being made that other traders, including customers, will be able to trade like I do. Generally expected (average/typical) trader results are that all traders incur trading losses and most do not become profitable, regardless of the training they get. Trading is a speculative, high-risk activity.

Some insights too that make a difference in trading:

a) I like to put on a lot of small-share trades to 'spray the field' by being in dozens of breakout stocks during the opening hour, then scale up on the winners that continue

b) managing off your P&L is more important than fine tuning of the specific 'when to pull the trigger' part of it (I cover examples in my live seminars, and dvds)

c) too many traders put on large size (200-300 or more shares from the beginning), and take a 'death of a thousand cuts' with stops... instead it's best to start small and wide across the field, then leverage in on winning trades only

d) I like using 2d lows as absolute stop levels for trailing stops in swing trades


-ken