Whether you’re a member here at the site or not, I want to be in a better habit of looking in the rearview mirror together at some of the trades which have been shared of late with Bandit members. There are always lessons to be learned when you see which kinds of plays have worked best, which kinds of trades failed, and which were the better movers you may have missed out on.
Because I recently covered the swing performance for this same period, I wanted to go back and review the charts which yielded some of the better single-day moves for me. I prefer to trade on both the day and swing timeframe, and I view these single-day setups as the cashflow trades to get me through the week, particularly when swing setups are less plentiful.
I’m not a hyper-scalper darting in and out of trades, because these days you can’t compete on speed. However, these setups look good on the daily charts to me but for a variety of reasons I don’t take them for swings. Being able to grab these for anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours offers plenty of opportunity to capture as they cross key levels or break out of bases.
I always set these up & share them the night before as single-day plays where I’m only looking to participate in the initial move out of the patterns. These plays are set up when I don’t trust the chart or the market for a lasting move, or when the bases are too loose to justify a much wider swing stop.
Understand that although the charts below highlight winners, I do take plenty of losing trades. Those of you who read my posts know the importance I place on losing properly, as losing trades are part of trading. As per my day trading strategy though, I limit losses on single-day trades to 1% from entry, so the losing trades are extremely small and therefore it’s easy to cover multiple losses with a single decent trade. My hope in sharing these charts is to share which kinds of plays have generated the best moves for me of late.
Also, the list below does not include all of the winning trades, as there were many others in the 1-3% range which added up nicely. But this is a snapshot of the kinds of plays I take for the single-day timeframe.
I like to take these for cash-flow trades with a 1% initial stop from entry and aim to ride whatever momentum is present for the day by monitoring the intraday chart.
February:
List: here is a list of many of the single-day movers from Feb. 2014:
March:
List: here is a list of many of the single-day movers from Mar. 2014:
The best plays lately have been trend line breaks after pullbacks, followed by lateral level breaks and compression patterns.
You could be making more from your trading. If these are the kinds of plays you like to take, now you know where to find them.
I dig out the best setups in the market each day, structure my trading plan for the following session, then share those trades with members via the nightly report. They include swing trades and single-day trades like those above. Not only am I explaining where I’m looking to trade them, but I also explain why I’m looking to trade them.
If you’re not a member, why not give it a try today?
Trade Like a Bandit!
Jeff White
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Any reason why you don’t trade options? Since you are doing round trips by buying and closing out your stock positions in the same day have you ever thought about the greater profits that options could provide you (especially the Weekly Options)? A 5% gain on a stock can easily be a 500% gain from the right option position on that same stock. I am also in the DFW area.
Thanks KT for reading and for this question. It’s just a matter of liquidity. Nearly every stock I trade is optionable, but the option markets in some of them are not as relatively liquid as the stock. So while they do offer leverage, in some cases the markets are too wide for me.
Hi Jeff. Thanks for the charts. Like your trade setups.What are some of the criteria you use to distinguish between a swing trade and a daytrade? Also, how many trading ideas do you offer your members on a daily basis? What % are daytrades? Thanks
Hi Al, I appreciate the questions.
Regarding trade timeframe (day vs. swing) criteria, this is something I get asked often and should discuss more frequently. I actually posted on it recently here but have also discussed it in the past.
There are usually 3-6 trades highlighted in the nightly report, although it will vary depending upon market conditions. Well over half are daytrades, as the criteria for those plays is less stringent (I’m much more selective when holding overnight). The daytrades are also the cashflow trades for me, so there are more of them than swings. And lately, there have been fewer swings anyway with the frequent market reversals we’ve been seeing.
I hope this helps, and if you have follow-up questions please feel free to ask. Go get ’em this week!