TheStockBandit.net

The 4th Quarter is here - Are you ready?

The home stretch is here. The 4th quarter is all we have left for 2006, so get ready to make it count! Where are you with your trading goals? Has it been a great year and you want to mostly hang onto gains? If so, stay picky and you’ll be fine. Have you had a mediocre year and you’d love to make some progress before the fat lady sings? If so, sit tight - there should be plenty of chances to make some good trades if you do your homework and look for them. Enjoy the weekend but take a moment to remind yourself of what you want to have achieved by New Year’s Eve

Whatever your situation is, bring your game face – it all starts Monday!

Jeff White
President, The Stock Bandit, Inc.
www.TheStockBandit.com
Watch me trade the 4th Quarter here.

Technorati Tags: Stocks, Investing, Stock Trading, Trading, Stock Market

This market just keeps on trucking! I wouldn’t want to be short it, but the slow drift higher also is making it tougher to find good setups for new longs these past few days. Some rest or even a brief pullback would help to create bases for many stocks which could get reset and produce stronger upside bursts in the coming weeks. I suspect there are quite a few who still want into the market, and that crowd is likely to keep the dips shallow for a little while here.

I’ve been trading the long side heavily and am still positioned long, but it’s a good time to be patient with adding new trades here on a Friday at the end of the quarter. Don’t force trades if they aren’t there. Once we see a rest there should be plenty of new opportunities arise, but until then the best bet is probably to stay long if you’re already in or stand aside if you’re sitting on cash.

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He’s no Market Wizard, but he is The Wiz, and nobody beats him.

It’s true - I’m a huge Market Wizards fan. All 3 of these interview-style trading books by Jack Schwager are excellent, and they continue to teach and remind me of highly important lessons about trading. My copies are all marked up with underlines, highlights, and margin notes, and I seem to add more every time I open them up.

Recently, I ran across a great quote by Larry Hite in Market Wizards:

“First, if you never bet your lifestyle, from a trading standpoint, nothing bad will ever happen to you. Second, if you know what the worst possible outcome is, it gives you tremendous freedom. The truth is that, while you can’t quantify reward, you can quantify risk.”

What a nice, basic concept. Know your risk…..on every trade, at any given time.

I know a trader who’s struggling to follow this advice right now. After getting caught on the wrong side of the market a few times in recent weeks, Read more »

I still can’t believe how inexpensive StockTickr is for such a fantastic feature-rich product. Even more, the guys at StockTickr are always working hard to improve and add new features to their already great product. Well, they just did it again.

Now when you enter and exit trades and post them in your journal (public or private - your choice), the StockTickr Chart Review automatically captures chart images for you and even notates on the charts where you got into or out of the trade. Even better, multiple timeframes are provided (5 minute, 10 minute, 15 minute, and 30 minute bars) as well as intraday charts of SPY and QQQQ to help you see what the market was doing when you got into or out of your trades. Any trader can see what a valuable tool this is to be able to review not only trading performance data generated by the StockTickr Journal, but to also see the charts of your trades when reviewing your results.

Check out the StockTickr Chart Review post for more details. And to the guys at StockTickr, keep up the great work!

Jeff White
President, The Stock Bandit, Inc.
www.TheStockBandit.com

Technorati Tags: Stocks, Stock Trading, Trading, Trading Journal, StockTickr

For those not already short, you can get there easily by routing your short sale through the proper venue.

On the heels of my order types post, I wanted to point out a useful tool to direct-access traders which only the more active day traders are likely to already know. Active traders who diversify are willing to trade both sides of the market, and aside from the uptick rule, getting filled on a short sale order is often the hardest part to catching the trade on the dark side.

Direct-access trading platforms offer hotkey choices to traders, allowing you to set up specific keys for sending out designated kinds of orders which are routed through your chosen venue. I have found that the ARCA market short/sell is probably my most valued hotkey for a couple of reasons. When I want out of a long position, I hit that key to send out a market sell order, regardless of whether I’m trading a listed stock or a Nasdaq stock. However, that same key is also the one I use when I am short selling a stock and need to enter the trade quickly. And fortunately for me, my trading platform automatically checks whether I’m already long, short, or flat so that I don’t need to set up different hotkeys for selling vs. short selling. For those of you hunting for the best direct-access broker, you might want to consider whether or not you’ll have to send out different order types for selling and shorting. Personally, I like to keep things simple!

The ARCA market short/sell is a proactive order, which means it will effectively ‘chase’ the market lower until either your order is filled or you cancel the order. On Nasdaq stocks, I find that using this key will get me into the trade almost instantly (it is scary fast), and on listed stocks (NYSE) it does a great job of helping me get filled when I want to get short.

Remember that short selling in a strong market can be tricky, but there’s still opportunities out there to catch pullbacks if you look for them in this environment. Once you find them, if you aren’t using the ARCA market short/sell order, you should be. It will make a world of difference to those of you who are willing to trade the short side.

Jeff White
President, The Stock Bandit, Inc.
www.TheStockBandit.com

Technorati Tags: Stocks, Investing, Stock Trading, Trading, Short Selling, Diversification